http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/01/12/adult-support050112.html
Court tells doctor to foot daughter's med school bill
Last Updated Wed, 12 Jan 2005 08:59:20 EST
CBC News
SURREY, B.C. - British Columbia's highest court has ruled that a doctor must
pay 50 per cent of the cost of putting his 23-year-old daughter through
medical school, referring to the money as "child support."

The decision by the province's Court of Appeal could set a precedent because
previous decisions have decreed that parents with sufficient means are
responsible only for seeing their children through undergraduate degree
programs.

As far as the courts were concerned, adult children have been on their own
when it came to paying for postgraduate education in most circumstances.

The doctor at the centre of the case, William Neufeld, is angry that he must
shell out as much as $22,000 a year to see his daughter Jennifer through at
least three years of medical school at the University of Calgary.

"It's just very wrong to teach the children of this province that if they
happen to be the children of a person who makes more than an average amount
of money, they can just sit on their ass and do absolutely nothing and
expect to be paid for it, as long as they're making good marks," he told the
Vancouver Province Tuesday.

In making the ruling, one judge referred to Jennifer as "an exemplary
student."

The appeals court based its ruling on the fact that a separation agreement
Neufeld signed after splitting with Jennifer's mother Barbara in 1999 did
not set a cap on his educational support for either Jennifer or her younger
brother.

Barbara Neufeld's only income is from spousal support, the ruling noted.

The ruling also took into account William Neufeld's income of $170,000 a
year, and said it might have come to a different conclusion for a child
"simply going to college because there is nothing better to do."

A lawyer acting for Barbara Neufeld said adult children would be unlikely to
receive such support in future court rulings if they took a long break
between degrees or went back to school to pursue a second career at some
point later in life.




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