Divorce Defenders

College Counselors, SAT Tutors, and Application Season

Decision-Making for High-Achieving Teens

Divorced parents and their teenage son meeting with a college counselor to review applications, SAT preparation, and deadlines.

Application season has one feature no other custody dispute shares: a deadline that will not move, attached to an outcome your child carries for four years.

For a Los Angeles family with a junior or senior in a competitive independent school, the machinery starts turning in August. Private counselors, test prep, essay coaching, athletic recruiting windows, portfolio reviews, campus visits. Every one of them is sequenced against dates published a year ahead. Two parents who are not aligned by Labor Day discover it in October, when there is no room left to fix anything.

Written for separated and divorcing California parents with a college-bound teenager, particularly where independent counselors, recruiting, or significant tuition commitments are in play. If your case also involves substantial assets, read this alongside the money questions that come up in a high-net-worth divorce.

Short Answer: Can One Parent Post Photos of a Child Online During a California Divorce?

Common question
Short answer
Who decides where they apply?
Both parents, until the student turns 18. After that, the student.
Which law applies?
Fam. Code § 3083 while a minor; § 3901 on support duration.
Will a court order college tuition?
Generally not in California, absent a written agreement between the parents.
What should we do now?
Sign a college cost agreement before senior year starts.

Why Does This Start in August?

The application calendar is front-loaded, and nearly every dependency lands inside the first six weeks of school.

Independent counselors sign engagement letters over the summer, frequently with the annual fee payable up front. Fall test dates are registered in August. Early Decision and Early Action deadlines sit on 1 or 15 November, which puts essay drafting squarely in September. Athletic recruiting contact periods, official visits, and verbal commitments run on a separate calendar with its own rules. Arts portfolio and audition deadlines are earlier still.

And there is a clock inside the clock. Senior year is the last year your custody order applies to this child at all. A student who turns 18 in October is making these decisions independently from that birthday forward, whatever the judgment says.

What Does California Law Say About College Decisions and Costs?

Three points define the ground, and the second one takes most Los Angeles families by surprise.

Decisions while the child is a minor. Family Code section 3003 places education inside joint legal custody. Family Code section 3083 requires the court to specify which decisions need both parents’ consent, and provides that in all other circumstances either parent acting alone may exercise legal control. If your judgment does not name education decisions as joint, a parent may be able to retain a counselor, register a test, or approve an application list without agreement.

Where the support duty ends. Family Code section 3901 sets the ordinary endpoint: the duty to support continues until the child completes the twelfth grade or reaches 19, whichever happens first, for an unmarried full-time high school student who is not self-supporting. That is the statutory line.

College costs. California is not a state where courts routinely order divorced parents to fund a child’s college education. Absent a written agreement between the parents, the obligation generally is not imposed. Families who have lived elsewhere, or who assume it works the way it does in New Jersey or Massachusetts, are regularly caught out by this.

So the practical rule is short and unforgiving: if you want college costs shared, it has to be in an agreement. A stipulation or a judgment provision addressing college expenses is enforceable as an agreement. An understanding reached over dinner in a calmer year is not, and neither is a text message that says “of course we’ll split it.”

Interim educational support. While the child is still a minor, Family Code section 4062(b)(1) permits, without requiring, the court to order costs related to the educational or other special needs of the children as additional child support. Test prep, an independent counselor, and academic coaching for an eleventh grader can fall inside that discretionary category. Family Code section 4061 governs how those add-ons get apportioned.

What Changes on the Child’s Eighteenth Birthday?

More than most parents expect, and the date frequently lands mid-application.

Legal custody ends. The parenting plan ends. Neither parent holds decision-making authority over applications, visits, or enrollment.

Educational privacy shifts too. Under federal law, rights over education records transfer to the student when the student turns 18 or enrolls in a postsecondary institution. From that point a college communicates with the student, not with either parent, unless the student authorizes otherwise. The Department of Education’s FERPA guidance sets out the transfer clearly.

Financial aid adds a further wrinkle worth checking rather than guessing at. Under current federal student aid rules, where a student’s parents are separated or divorced, the required parent contributor is the parent who provided the greater portion of the student’s financial support, not necessarily the parent the student lived with most. Federal Student Aid publishes a contributor guide for exactly this question. In a household where support flows through several channels, which parent that is can be genuinely contested, and the school’s counseling office is a better source than either parent’s assumption.

A Beverly Hills Example

Fictional. The numbers are not exaggerated.

Diane and Robert separated when their son was fifteen. He is now a senior at a Los Angeles independent school, a competitive swimmer being recruited by two Division I programs, and he turns 18 in October.

In August, Diane retains an independent college counselor at roughly twenty thousand dollars for the cycle, plus test prep. She does not consult Robert. He hears about it from their son.

Robert’s objections are specific rather than general. He was not asked about the counselor. He disagrees with an application list weighted toward schools three thousand miles away. He has never agreed to pay for college. And he believes the recruiting conversations are being managed around him.

Diane’s answer is that deadlines were closing and their son needed help.

What actually resolves it is unglamorous. On the counselor, section 3083 may well have permitted her to act alone, but section 4062(b)(1) makes contribution discretionary rather than automatic, so Robert’s exposure is a live question rather than a settled one. On the application list, once their son turns 18 in October, neither of them decides. On tuition, absent a written agreement Robert may owe nothing at all, which means the productive move is a negotiated agreement in September rather than a motion in March.

Is your senior’s application season about to become a custody dispute? Request a FREE ASSESSMENT with Divorce Defenders and get the counselor, cost, and communication terms settled before November deadlines.

What Should Parents Agree On Before Applications Open?

  • Counselor selection and cost. Who is retained, at what fee, and how it is shared. Where the child is still a minor, reference section 4062(b)(1) by name.
  • Information rights. Both parents receive the counselor’s reports, the application list, deadlines, and scores directly from the source, not filtered through the student.
  • Testing. Who registers, who pays, how many sittings, and where the student sits them.
  • The application list. How schools get added and removed, and what happens if the parents disagree while the child is still 17.
  • Visits and travel. Who accompanies the student, whose parenting time is consumed, and who pays. Section 4062(b)(2) addresses travel expenses for visitation as a separate discretionary category.
  • Recruiting. For a recruited athlete: who talks to coaches, who attends official visits, who signs what, and when.
  • Financial aid participation. Both parents agree to provide financial information promptly on request from any institution, and to confirm the contributor question with the counseling office rather than assuming.
  • College costs. The single most important term in the document. Shared or not, in what proportions, subject to what caps, covering which categories, for how many years. Signed, before senior year.
  • Post-18 communication. An agreed understanding that both parents stay informed after the student turns 18, subject to the student’s own consent.

When Does This Require Court Intervention?

Application season is close to the worst possible time to be in court, which is the argument for settling in August. Court becomes appropriate when:

  • One parent has run up substantial counseling or test prep costs and is demanding contribution without prior agreement.
  • A parent is being excluded from the process entirely while the child is still a minor.
  • Someone is blocking test registration, transcript release, or an application the student needs to file.
  • A written college cost agreement is being repudiated.
  • A parent is pressuring the student toward or away from schools to a degree that has become a welfare issue.

Family Code section 3087 permits modification of a joint custody order where the child’s best interest requires it. Family Code section 3150 allows appointment of counsel for the child, which can be genuinely useful for a seventeen-year-old caught between two parents in October. Family Code section 271 permits a fee award as a sanction measured by conduct that frustrated settlement and increased cost.

What Not to Do

  • Do not make the student the negotiator. A seventeen-year-old drafting supplemental essays should not also be brokering who pays the counselor.
  • Do not assume college costs are automatic. California generally does not impose a college support obligation absent agreement, and hoping otherwise is not a plan.
  • Do not withhold financial information. Refusing to complete an aid form can cost your child an offer, and courts take a dim view of it for good reason.
  • Do not use the application list as leverage. Steering a child toward schools chosen for proximity to one parent is visible to the counselor, to the other parent, and eventually to the student.
  • Do not wait for the eighteenth birthday to resolve things. It removes your authority. It does not remove the disagreement.
  • Do not litigate in October. The calendar will not accommodate you, and the person who absorbs the cost is applying to college that month. If something must be resolved formally, resolve it before term starts, ideally as part of the wider parenting plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

Usually not, unless they agreed to in writing. Section 3901 puts the ordinary end of the support duty at completion of twelfth grade or age 19, whichever arrives first, for an unmarried full-time high school student who is not self-supporting. Courts here rarely order tuition absent agreement.

Possibly. Section 3083 provides that where a joint legal custody order does not name a decision as requiring both signatures, either parent may act alone. Whether the other parent then owes half the fee is an entirely separate question, answered by section 4062(b)(1).

Under current federal student aid rules, the required contributor for separated or divorced parents is whichever parent supplied the greater share of the student’s financial support. That is not necessarily the parent the student lived with most. Verify it with the college counseling office rather than assuming.

As to that child, it stops. An eighteen-year-old decides where to apply, where to visit, and where to enroll, and education record rights pass to the student. Anything financial that continues between the parents has to rest on an agreement, because the custody order no longer carries it.

How Divorce Defenders Helps You Settle It in August, Not November

Nothing about senior year rewards improvisation. The families who reach the New Year without a filing are almost invariably the ones who signed something short in August: who the counselor is, who pays for what, who receives which reports, and what happens about tuition. Two pages, agreed while neither of them had a position to protect.

If your teenager is heading into junior or senior year and none of that exists on paper, request your FREE ASSESSMENT with Divorce Defenders. Katherine Cohan is a Certified Family Law Specialist serving Los Angeles and Beverly Hills families.

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