Getting a Fair Share of College Costs After Separation

The situation

Harpreet and Kiran had run separate landscaping crews out of the same house in Barrie for eleven years before deciding to separate. The split itself was calm. They agreed on how to divide the modest home they owned together, and on a rough shared-parenting schedule for the time their son, Chidi, still lived under either roof. What they could not agree on was money for Chidi's college.

Chidi had been accepted into a two-year diploma program at a college roughly two hours from Barrie, requiring him to live away from home for eight months of the year. Between tuition, a residence room, a mandatory meal plan, and books, the program cost about $16,000 for the first year. Chidi had lined up a part-time job near campus expected to bring in about $6,000 over the year, and he had applied for provincial and federal student financial assistance, which was expected to cover roughly $4,000 more in grants and loans. That left a gap of about $6,000 that someone had to cover.

Harpreet assumed the gap would be split between the two parents, the way most of Chidi's expenses always had been. Kiran disagreed. Kiran's position was that once a child turns eighteen and moves out to attend school, the parents' financial obligation effectively ends, and that Chidi should be expected to take on more of the shortfall himself through additional part-time work or a larger student loan. The two had exchanged a few tense text messages about it, but neither wanted the disagreement to poison an otherwise amicable separation, and both still needed to finalize the rest of their separation agreement — the division of the house, the vehicles, and the equipment each used for work. Harpreet came to Treadstone Law wanting to know whether Kiran's position was actually the law, and if not, how to make Kiran pay a fair share without turning a manageable separation into a costly fight.

The legal problem

Under the Child Support Guidelines, a child does not automatically stop being entitled to support at eighteen. A child who is enrolled full-time in a post-secondary program and unable to withdraw from their parents' charge because of that enrolment can remain a "child of the marriage" for support purposes, and post-secondary costs can qualify as a special or extraordinary expense to be added on top of, or alongside, ordinary support. Kiran's assumption that turning eighteen changed everything was simply wrong, and our first job was to explain why.

The harder question was what a fair contribution actually looked like. Special expenses are not simply divided down the middle. They are first netted against any grants, scholarships, bursaries, or income the child is reasonably expected to contribute, and the remaining amount is then split between the parents in proportion to their incomes — not equally, unless their incomes happen to be equal. Both Harpreet and Kiran ran small landscaping operations with income that varied year to year depending on contracts, weather, and equipment costs, which meant establishing each parent's income for guideline purposes required more than a quick look at a pay stub.

There was also a genuine, defensible question buried inside Kiran's objection: was $16,000 a reasonable cost, or could Chidi have chosen a cheaper, local option and lived at home? The guidelines ask whether an expense is reasonable given the means of the parents and the child, and given the child's needs. A program requiring the child to live away from home is treated differently than one available locally, and that distinction mattered here because it affected roughly $9,000 of the total cost tied to residence and the meal plan alone.

What we did

1. Confirmed Chidi's continued entitlement. We set out, in plain terms Kiran could not credibly dispute, why full-time enrolment in a diploma program kept Chidi within the definition of a child still entitled to support, and gathered the college's enrolment confirmation and program length to back it up.
2. Established both parents' guideline income. Because both parents were self-employed landscapers with fluctuating annual revenue, we requested financial statements and tax returns from the prior three years to calculate a representative income figure for each of them, rather than relying on a single volatile year that could unfairly skew the split.
3. Netted the true shortfall. We built a line-by-line breakdown of the $16,000 total cost, subtracted Chidi's expected $6,000 in part-time earnings and $4,000 in student financial assistance, and arrived at a documented shortfall of about $6,000 for the first year — the actual figure the parents needed to share, not the sticker price of the program.
4. Addressed the reasonableness objection directly. Rather than dismiss Kiran's concern, we confirmed that no comparable diploma program was offered within commuting distance of Barrie, which supported the away-from-home costs as a necessary rather than a discretionary expense, and shared that confirmation with Kiran before positions hardened.
5. Proposed a proportional sharing formula tied to income, not a fixed dollar figure. Based on the calculated incomes, Harpreet's share worked out to roughly 47% of the shortfall and Kiran's to roughly 53%. We proposed this as a percentage split rather than a flat amount, so it would scale automatically if costs changed in year two.
6. Built in annual reconciliation. Because tuition, the child's earnings, and financial assistance amounts change every year, we proposed the parents exchange updated program costs, income figures, and Chidi's confirmed earnings each August before the next school year, and adjust the contribution accordingly, rather than negotiating from scratch or heading to court every time something shifted.
7. Documented the agreement formally. Once Kiran accepted the proportional approach, we incorporated the terms into the parents' separation agreement so the obligation was enforceable, rather than leaving it as an informal understanding that could unravel at the first missed payment.

The outcome

Kiran agreed to the proportional formula once the numbers were laid out with the netting calculation attached — seeing that the request was for roughly $2,800 rather than a share of the full $16,000 sticker price changed the conversation considerably. The final agreement had Kiran contributing about 53% of the annually reconciled shortfall for as long as Chidi remained enrolled full-time in an eligible program, with Harpreet covering the remaining 47%, consistent with their respective incomes.

For the first year, that meant Kiran paid roughly $3,200 and Harpreet roughly $2,800 toward Chidi's $6,000 shortfall, on top of the ordinary monthly child support already in place. Because the formula was written into the separation agreement as a percentage tied to a documented calculation method rather than a flat figure, neither parent needed to renegotiate or return to Treadstone Law when Chidi's second-year costs came in about $1,100 higher due to a tuition increase — they simply recalculated using the same method and split the new number the same way.

The case did not require a court motion. Having the guideline framework, the netting math, and the reasonableness evidence assembled before the conversation with Kiran began was what turned a flat refusal into a workable agreement within a few weeks, rather than a drawn-out dispute stretching across Chidi's entire program. It also meant the rest of the separation agreement — the house, the vehicles, and the division of their landscaping equipment — could be finalized on schedule instead of stalling behind an unresolved fight over school costs.

Chidi finished the first year of the diploma program on schedule, and by the time the second year's costs arrived, the parents were able to apply the agreed formula themselves without needing to call a lawyer at all — proof that the time spent getting the calculation method right the first time was time well spent.

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