Not related to the liability question, but if you are using the 529 in part for the state tax deduction, you may be able to get a larger deduction with two accounts. Our state offers a $2,500 max deduction, so we opened a 529 for each kid in my husband's name and began contributing $2,500/yr to each. But we wanted to save more, so we also set up a separate Vanguard account that we mentally designated as college savings and put another $5-6K/yr there. Then we realized that the deduction is $2,500 per account, not a per-child max (i.e., each parent can open a separate account for each kid, and you can deduct $2,500 for each, or $10K for us). So we opened another account for each kid in my name and started adding $2,500/yr to those (in lieu of the Vanguard). So now we are saving the same amount for college, but paying $450 less on our state taxes.