In today’s mini-episode, I wanted to talk about health insurance coverage for children and how health insurance coverage is maintained through the process of divorce. One of the things that you will talk about in the child support section of your agreement and that the court scrutinizes very closely is the continuation of health insurance coverage for your kids.
Now, unlike the continuation of health insurance coverage for adults, as a result of the divorce, there does not need to be, though there may be, any change in the coverage of your kids under your health insurance. They are still your kids. You are still entitled to insure them. The question becomes which parent is better situated to insure the kids and who is going to be made legally responsible for insuring the kids by your agreement? Generally speaking, that’s going to be the parent who has been insuring the kids unless there is some important reason why the insurance for the kids needs to change, it will generally be with the parent who has historically insured the kids. That being said, there are a couple of contingencies or changes in the future in their agreement concerning the provision of health insurance for their kids. Let me speak to those now.
You and your spouse may want to consider, first of all, what happens if one of you, the parent who has not been insuring the kids, all of a sudden is eligible for a better quality health plan than the one that the kids are currently insured under. You may say to yourself, “Well, that’s a no-brainer. We would switch the kids. We would enroll the kids in that health insurance plan.” But it can (a) be helpful to clarify that, and (b) if you anticipate that there might be any disagreement about that, for instance, perhaps because the premium would be slightly higher, you may want to use your agreement as a place to really clarify how would you determine what would be a better plan for the kids and what would happen if a parent became eligible for a better plan for the kids? Would they be obligated to enroll the kids in that plan? Would it be something that you would discuss at the time, and you would only change by mutual agreement? If you anticipate that that may be something that could come up in your situation, you may want to clarify in your agreement how you would handle it.
Now, a second change of circumstances that could come up is that the parent who is not currently insuring the kids may gain access in the future to a less expensive health insurance plan than the parent who is at that time insuring the kids. Again, what happens in that situation? What happens if the coverage is comparable and the new plan is potentially cheaper? What happens if the coverage is not comparable, and as a result of lower quality coverage, the other parent has access to a lower-cost plan? Is that something that, given financial considerations, you would want to obligate yourselves to opt into, which is to say, any less expensive option for a health insurance plan for your kids is something you’re both going to legally commit yourselves to opt into via your agreement? Or would you want to say, “Look, if one of us has a less expensive health insurance plan available, we will have a conversation and mutually agree as to whether or not we are going to opt into that plan for our kids”? Bear in mind, as I have mentioned in prior episodes, that an agreement to discuss something in the future and an agreement to agree on something in the future is not technically legally enforceable. But if that is what you plan to do, which is just to say, “We’ll discuss it, but neither of us wants to commit to anything at this time,” then it’s okay to say that in your agreement. You just also want to bear in mind that it doesn’t legally obligate either of you to do anything vis-à-vis that less expensive plan.
A final change in circumstances that comes up for people is what happens if one parent loses their access to employer-sponsored health insurance coverage? That could be, and typically would be, through the loss of a job. It could be, I suppose, through a change in the workplace’s benefits, but that would be pretty uncommon. If a parent loses a job and, as a result, loses access to employer-sponsored health insurance, what should happen? Should the other parent be obligated to insure the kids if they have access to employer-sponsored coverage? That’s pretty common to say. If neither parent has access to employer-sponsored health insurance, what should the parents do? Typically, we will say that the parents commit to collaborate and cooperate with one another to obtain health insurance for their kids in the absence of access to employer-sponsored health insurance.
Actually, one other change in circumstances that you might want to consider as your kids get older is (a) if they have health insurance available to them through college, when they attend college, you may find that that is a more affordable option for your family than continuing to insure them through whatever particular plan they’re insured through at the time they attend college. Certainly, if you have a commitment to provide health insurance for your kids beyond college graduation, which is, while not common, you do see it in agreements, you will want to consider what happens. What is the responsibility of each parent to provide that coverage if and when your child is eligible for his or her own health insurance coverage through his or her own employer?
A related but important topic on the subject of health insurance for your kids is how you share the cost of health insurance that you provide for your kids and that we will speak to in an episode on health-related expenses for kids. For now, this has been our episode on the provision of health insurance benefits for your kid in the context of a divorce. I hope it was helpful for you.