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Episode 92 Transcript: Big-Ticket Purchases for Kids

In today’s episode, I wanted to cover the topic of big-ticket purchases for kids. What do I mean when I say big-ticket purchases? I am talking about things like buying a car for a child, or an expensive piece of electronics, paying for an expensive vacation for a child, taking them on an elaborate trip, or buying expensive articles of clothing or shoes or different accessories or jewelry for a child. This is going to vary a lot family to family, but the topic of big-ticket purchases for kids is one that comes up between couples in a divorce in two different ways.

The first way is where you anticipate that you will need to make certain purchases for your child and they will be expensive, for instance, a laptop computer. You want to make sure that your co-parent is sharing the burden of those purchases with you in some way, however you are sharing the responsibility for other purchases or other expenses for the child, whether it’s in proportion to your incomes or equally or in some other manner. Essentially, you can envision needing to make certain big-ticket purchases for your kids, and you want to make sure that your co-parent is contributing to those, and you’re not footing the bill entirely for them.

For that type of concern, the critical thing is to ensure that in the child support section of your divorce agreement, you have addressed specifically those kinds of purchases. Specifically, you have addressed how you and your co-parent are going to share responsibility for purchasing those kinds of big-ticket items. If you have already signed your divorce agreement, and you reference it and you do not see the kind of purchase you are envisioning, a laptop, for instance, referenced in your agreement anywhere, first, before you conclude that it’s not referenced in your agreement, you definitely want to confirm with your attorney or ask your mediator to review the agreement and confirm that with you. If that kind of purchase is not referenced in your agreement, it is likely not something that your co-parent will be held responsible for sharing with you if you incur the purchase, the expense. And vice-versa, if your co-parent incurs the expense, makes the purchase, it is not technically something that you would be held legally responsible to share with them. I say that with the assumption that you have not had further court intervention around this subject.

Certainly, if this particular type of purchase is not addressed in your agreement or is not addressed in a clear way in your agreement, if you cannot agree on your own or with the assistance of a mediator, either of you can always go to court and try to make a case for why you would be entitled to have the court change or modify your child support agreement to include and to provide for a sharing of responsibility for the particular purchase in question. If you are able to do that successfully, then certainly in the future, when you make a kind of purchase like that, your co-parent would be responsible for sharing that purchase with you as is laid out in your agreement.

Assuming that you have not done that and you don’t intend to do it, if your agreement doesn’t specify a responsibility for sharing a particular item, generally speaking, the person who purchases that item is stuck with footing the bill. If that’s you, then you are stuck footing the bill. If it’s your co-parent, then your co-parent is going to be stuck footing the bill. So, for sure, check with your attorney and/or your mediator. In terms of sharing responsibility for purchasing big-ticket items for your kid, it either needs to be spelled out in your agreement as something you affirmatively are going to share and how, or it will be the responsibility of the parent paying for it, unless you and your co-parent can otherwise agree.

The other way in which the subject of purchasing big-ticket, expensive items or travel or experiences for a child comes up is where one or both parents want to restrict the other parent’s ability to purchase those things for the child. This is the inverse of what I just described. This is not the case of the purchasing parent looking for a contribution from the other parent. Far from it. They may know that the other parent is absolutely not on board with purchasing whatever the item is for the child and they, as a result of that, are not seeking any kind of contribution from the other parent. The other parent, more as a parenting matter, is not comfortable with that kind of purchase being made for the child and they want to restrict that. This certainly comes up in couples where the parents have very different styles financially of parenting. Maybe one parent comes from a family where gift-giving, and a lot of gift-giving, was just a way that the family showed love for each other, and that parent wants to be able to purchase a lot of things for the children, whereas the other parent may see purchasing a lot of things for the children, and in particular, high-expense items, as conveying the wrong kind of values to the child, as not instilling the sense of hard work in the child if the child feels like they can receive whatever they want for free without having to work for it. There is a litany of reasons why a parent might be opposed to purchasing expensive items or experiences for a child at a given age.

Anyway, where parents have very different financial philosophies around parenting and around providing high-expense items for their kids, the parent who is not in favor of doing that may want to restrict the other parent’s ability to do it. What I encourage you to do there is to really think about prioritizing what are the particular kinds of purchases that you really as a parent cannot fathom tolerating for your kids, that you really feel like would be so damaging for your kids to have the other parent purchase, because where you have different financial parenting styles between you and your co-parent, there’s really not a realistic universe in which you can obligate your co-parent to adopt and completely abide by your personal style, financially speaking, of parenting.

You’re going to need to accept that if you and your co-parent have different financial styles of parenting, there are going to be some purchases that your co-parent may make for the kids that you are not on board with. What you want to do for purposes of your agreement is think about whether there are any really critical items that you just feel are absolutely inappropriate for your child to receive as a gift from a parent under a particular age, at a particular age, and then you want to use your agreement to really specify that clearly.

I want to point out that that kind of specification would generally not go in your child support section because it’s not about a parent’s responsibility to pay for something for the child or to share in paying for something for the child. Rather, it would probably belong in the legal custody or the parenting decision making section for the child. If you have negotiated, for instance, “We agree that we will not purchase a car for our child unless both parents mutually agree to it at the time,” or simply, “We will not do that for our child under the age of 18 or 21” or whatever you negotiate. That is more of a parenting decision than a financial decision. In particular, where your co-parent is willing to fully foot the cost, it’s really not a financial issue. It’s a parenting issue. You want to prioritize the items that are most critical to you to not have either parent purchase for the child at all or under a certain age, and then you want to include those in your parenting discussion. They should go, thus, in your parenting or custody section as decisions that the parents have agreed it is in the best interest of the child not to receive XYZ. That might be full stop or that might be prior to a particular birthday from either parent, so that if a parent went ahead and purchased a, say, car for the child, you could go back and point to the clause in your agreement where it says that you have both agreed that it is not in your child’s best interest, and thus, neither parent would be a part of purchasing a car for that child prior to a certain age or purchasing a car for the child, full stop.

I have to say, I have not seen cases in which an agreement contained a clause like that and a parent later violated that clause and then the parties went to court to litigate the issue. I don’t know how a court would resolve that. I suppose they could order, in the case of a car, if it contradicts the parenting commitments that you put in your agreement. The best-case scenario would be that the court would order the parent to take action that would, in a sense, undo that gift. I’ve never observed a case like that firsthand. I don’t know if any are out there. I’m sure some are. I encourage you to really prioritize and limit the number of things that you want to identify are just purchases that should not be made for a child.

Potentially, an example of that could be firearms. They’re expensive, so it could be a big-ticket item, but it’s not so much about the money. It’s more about for one parent and not the other. It could be more about the parenting values that that conveys to the child. Being really specific in your agreement that the two of you have discussed as a parenting decision whether or not it’s in the child’s best interest to receive something like that from a parent and you’ve determined that it is not is likely to be the most protective way for you to ensure that certain big-ticket important purchases are not made for the child at least before the age of 18. After the age of 18, custody is no longer relevant and you really can’t effectively restrict your co-parent’s decision making around what they purchase or don’t purchase for your child.

That was our mini-episode on big-ticket purchases for children and how to speak about them in your agreement. I hope it was helpful for you.

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