Here in NJ, after a divorce, the parents are required to pay for their children’s college education for four years.
There's actually some logic to that, IMHO. Divorce can have a negative impact on a child's educational accomplishments, and fewer kids of divorce go to college. Since the parents apparently imposed one barrier through the divorce, they're required to lower another barrier.
Whether that's the actual claimed logic behind the law, I have no idea, but I would guess there's some argument explaining why divorced parents have a legal obligation to put their kid through college while parents who haven't divorced don't, and that's the obvious one.
On the one hand, I can understand that argument.
OTOH, many parents cannot afford to pay their children’s college tuition even when they stay married. After a divorce, those parents are really financially broke then, and often they’re still raising younger children, too.
Then again, one friend (a divorced father) told me that college tuition qualifies for a tax credit. He said he got it all back with his tax refund.