[symple_spacing size=”80″]Divorce costs the parents more money for their child’s (children’s) education than those couples who stay married in New Jersey! A bold statement indeed to make, but it is a fact in New Jersey for divorced couples and not for those who stay married. For you the divorced parents are responsible for the child’s costs until they are determined to be emancipated by the court. Yes, I said by the court and not something to be determined by the parents or by the legislature.

The court case Newburgh v. Arrigo calls for the court to look at the “child’s relationship to the paying parent, including mutual affection and shared goals, as well as responsiveness to parental advice and guidance.” This 1982 court case decision was and is a blemish that the New Jersey Legislature has not seen fit to address in all the intervening decades. Again our legislative lawmakers are doing nothing about an injustice that should have been corrected by them a long time ago!

The most recent case of Maura McGarvey and Michael Ricci VS Caitlyn Ricci the judge ruled that the parents must pay for the twenty-one year olds college education. They are appealing saying that their daughter has a drinking problem, was asked to do chores and follow a curfew, which caused her to leave her mother’s home. She ended up with her grandparents and they funded the costs for the lawsuit. In the meantime the parents want their daughter to come home to the Mother and follow the rules set down for her to follow. If this had been a set of parents who were not divorced the courts could have not intervened, thus there is a double standard for those parents who decide to not stay married to each other.

It seems our New Jersey court system does understand that they are not there to make law, but instead to interpret the law as passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor. The separation of powers has too many times been ignored by our New Jersey Supreme Court Justices and it is time to say enough is enough! Too many times the wrong type of people have been given the power to judge us in court. The standards must be changed so that only those who have at least trial experience can be on the court and by not allowing those who are just political hacks with no real relevant experience to serve; we the people will be better off!

We the people who elect our New Jersey legislatures must somehow be more influential than those political pacts that seek to keep the status quo. Otherwise we our selves have no one to blame for these nonsensical court decisions and laws passed by our elected legislative representatives. So what can we the people do to influence our courts, not much can really cause our appointed judges to listen to us? After all we did not appoint them. Maybe it is time to have the judges not appointed, but instead have them directly elected by us the people of New Jersey.

That is my opinion – Jumpin Jersey Mike