A judge ruled that a Georgia woman didn’t have “any legal duty” to pay for her daughter’s college tuition bill before declaring bankruptcy, deepening the fracture between judges on whether financially struggling parents can help their children pay for college, the Wall Street Journal Bankruptcy Law Blog reported yesterday. In a Jan. 31 opinion, Judge Edward Coleman III ruled that Skidmore College could keep $57,836 in tuition that Leslie Kyrin Dunston paid, but he disagreed with the upstate New York school’s lawyers that parents who are on the verge of bankruptcy should be able to pay a child’s tuition bill. While Dunston “may have felt a moral obligation to pay” for her daughter’s education at Skidmore College, she didn’t benefit economically from those payments, he said in his opinion filed to U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Savannah, Ga. The finding makes Judge Coleman the latest judge to weigh in on the fairness of what are called tuition-clawback lawsuits, which are growing in number as the cost of college rises. Read more. (Subscription required.)
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