Divorce With Teenagers: When They Have Opinions and You Do Not Have All the Answers

A divorce with teenagers runs on different questions from one with small children. They do not need the concept explained. They want to know how much say they get, what happens to the money that was supposed to pay for college, and whether they are about to spend two years carrying messages between two adults.

Two of those have specific answers, and one of them changed recently enough that most of what you will read about it online is out of date. The third is entirely up to you.

Nothing here is legal or financial advice. Where a question touches a court order or a financial aid application, it belongs with a lawyer in your state or with the school's financial aid office.

In a divorce with teenagers, they already know

They already know. That is the short version, and it changes the starting position.

Teenagers pick up on a household long before it is announced, often in more detail than parents realize, because phones and thin walls and older cousins exist. By the time you sit them down, many are not receiving news. They are watching to see how honestly you handle telling them, which is a different test and a harder one.

Two other things separate this age group:

They can act on their own opinion. A four-year-old goes where the car goes. A sixteen-year-old has friends, possibly a job, possibly a license, and a strong view about which house their stuff is in. Schedules at this age get enforced by cooperation rather than by logistics.

The money question is concrete and close. College is eighteen months away rather than abstract, and they know roughly what it costs. Financial uncertainty lands harder on someone who has already started a list of schools.

AACAP describes the reaction at this end of the age range in one line: "Older children may feel deep sadness and loss." The wider picture of what adjustment looks like across ages is in am I ruining my kids by getting divorced.

Can a 14 year old choose which parent to live with?

Almost certainly not, and the belief that they can causes real damage, because parents who believe it start campaigning.

One state's statute shows the structure, though it is not the rule where you live unless you live there. California's Family Code section 3042 provides that "If a child is of sufficient age and capacity to reason so as to form an intelligent preference as to custody or visitation, the court shall consider, and give due weight to, the wishes of the child in making an order granting or modifying custody or visitation."

Consider and give due weight. Not follow.

The fourteen that everyone has heard about is in the next subsection, and it is about being heard rather than about deciding. The same statute says that "If the child is 14 years of age or older and wishes to address the court regarding custody or visitation, the child shall be permitted to do so, unless the court determines that doing so is not in the child's best interest, in which case, the court shall state its reasons for that finding on the record."

And it is not a floor either. Subdivision (d) provides that "This section does not prevent a child who is less than 14 years of age from addressing the court regarding custody or visitation, if the court determines that is appropriate pursuant to the child's best interest."

So in California, fourteen is the age at which a child who wants to speak to the court is generally allowed to. It is not an age at which a child chooses. Every state words this differently, some have no age in the statute at all, and how much weight a preference carries in practice varies by judge and by circumstance. What applies to you is a question for a lawyer in your state. The point of this section is only that being considered and being obeyed are two different things.

Why it matters practically: a parent who thinks their teenager has a vote starts trying to win it. That is the mechanism by which a fifteen-year-old ends up being lobbied by two adults, which is worse for them than any schedule.

When a teenager refuses to visit their non-custodial parent

At this age, refusal is a practical problem before it is a legal one. You cannot carry a sixteen-year-old to a car.

A few things that tend to help more than insisting:

• Separate the refusal from the relationship. Often the cause is a bedroom, a bathroom, wifi, a job, a girlfriend, or a soccer team, and the other parent has nothing to do with it. Those are solvable in a way that a story about hating their father is not.
• Ask what would make it workable, and then actually change something. Being taken seriously once buys more than a year of enforcement.
• Let the other parent hear it directly. Passing on a teenager's grievance secondhand turns you into either the messenger or the suspect. The rules on how to word what you do have to send are in messaging your ex.
• Do not reward the refusal by making one house the fun house. It works for a month and costs years.
• Tell your lawyer. A court order that is being ignored is a live issue, and it is better raised than quietly tolerated.

The full set of reasons children refuse, and which of them need a different response entirely, is in when your child does not want to come. Where a refusal comes with fear rather than reluctance, that is not a scheduling problem and none of the above applies. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.

Does divorce affect college financial aid?

Yes, and the rule that decides it changed. Most of what is written about this online still describes the old version.

The old rule was residential: the parent the student lived with more filled out the FAFSA. Under FAFSA Simplification that is no longer what determines it. The U.S. Department of Education's FAFSA Simplification questions and answers states the current rule in the question it poses to itself: "Under FAFSA Simplification, if a dependent student's parents are divorced or separated, the one who provides the greater portion of the student's financial support will be the parent on the FAFSA form."

The Department goes further on the same page: "When making this determination, any child support that one parent pays to the other for the student counts as financial support by the parent who pays."

That catches paying parents out. The support you send can be the thing that makes you the parent whose income goes on the form. Whether that helps or hurts the student depends entirely on whose income is higher, which means it is worth modeling before an agreement is signed rather than discovering in the spring of senior year.

Three related things to settle while the agreement is being written:

• Who is responsible for what share of college costs, and whether that is even enforceable where you live. Some states allow orders for post-secondary support and some do not, so this is a question for your lawyer rather than an assumption.
• Who owns and controls any 529 account, and who can withdraw from it. An account with one parent's name as owner is that parent's to direct, whatever the intention was when it was opened.
• Who fills out the forms and by when. Missing a deadline is a common and expensive way for a divorce to cost a student money.

The financial aid office at each school can tell you how they treat divorced households, and they are used to the question. If you are working out what the household can carry at all, money after a divorce and the One-Income Check are the place to start.

The job you must not give them

Teenagers are old enough to be good company and old enough to notice you are struggling, which makes them the most available adult in the house. That is exactly why this is the age where the line gets crossed.

The specific things to keep off them:

• Your feelings about their other parent. Including the accurate ones, including when they raise it first, and including when they agree with you.
• The logistics. Messages, schedule changes, and money questions go adult to adult, even when the teenager is more reliable than the adult. That includes the holiday schedule, which a teenager with a job and a social life will test harder than anyone.
• Financial detail they cannot act on. "Things are tight this year" is honest and manageable. A running commentary on legal fees turns a sixteen-year-old into a person who feels responsible for a household budget.
• The role of confidant. They will sometimes volunteer for it. Accepting is the thing to avoid, because a teenager who becomes your support system loses the ability to be upset in front of you.

What they can carry: knowing what is happening, being asked their view on things that affect them, and being told the truth in proportion.

The advice that does not fit a divorce with teenagers

"They're old enough to handle it." Old enough to understand it, which is not the same. Understanding means they can also imagine the alternatives, assign blame accurately, and worry about money. Comprehension adds weight rather than removing it.

"Let them decide where they live." Handing a fifteen-year-old the decision sounds respectful and puts them in the position of choosing between two parents, permanently and out loud. Ask their view, take it seriously, and let the adults own the decision.

"They'll be gone in two years anyway." They will be leaving from somewhere, and where that somewhere is, and whether it is calm, is what they will drive back to at Thanksgiving. The relationship you have with an adult child is largely built in these two years.

"Teenagers don't want to talk to their parents." They want to talk on their own schedule, which is usually late, in a car, or while doing something else. Availability at odd hours is worth more than a scheduled conversation.

What to ask, and who to ask

A lawyer in your state:

• How much weight does a child's preference carry here, and at what age is a child heard?
• Can college costs be included in an order in this state?
• How does the order handle a teenager who will not go, and what am I expected to do?

The school counselor:

• Can you tell us both the same things at the same time?
• Is there anything you are seeing that we should know about?

A financial planner or the college financial aid office:

• Given our two incomes, which of us being the FAFSA parent produces the better outcome for our student?
• What happens to the 529 in this scenario, and who controls it?

They are watching how this is done

The thing that separates this age group from every other one is that your teenager is old enough to be taking notes on how two adults end a marriage.

They will see whether people who are angry can still be fair, whether an agreement gets honored when it is inconvenient, and whether an adult can be sad without making it someone else's job. They will still have that at thirty, long after the schedule stops mattering.

The test most parents fail in front of a teenager is not the divorce itself but what comes a year later, when the other parent has somebody new and the teenager is the one who mentions it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a 14 year old choose which parent to live with?

Generally no. In California, Family Code 3042 says a child of sufficient age and capacity to form an intelligent preference has that preference considered and given due weight, and that a child 14 or older who wishes to address the court is generally permitted to do so. That is a right to be heard, not a right to decide, and every state words it differently. Ask a lawyer in your state.

Which parent files the FAFSA when divorced?

Under FAFSA Simplification, the parent who provides the greater portion of the student's financial support, which replaced the older rule based on who the student lived with more. Child support paid for the student counts as financial support by the parent who pays it, so the paying parent can end up being the FAFSA parent.

Does divorce affect college financial aid?

It can, in both directions, because which parent's income appears on the FAFSA determines the calculation. Whether that helps or hurts depends on which parent earns more, so it is worth working out before an agreement is finalized rather than during application season.

What do I do if my teenager refuses to visit their other parent?

Find out what the refusal is actually about, since at this age it is often about logistics, friends, or a bedroom rather than the parent. Ask what would make it workable and change something real. Tell your lawyer if there is a court order involved, and treat a refusal that involves fear as a different situation entirely.

How do I tell a teenager about divorce?

Assume they already suspect, give them the practical facts without the reasons behind the marriage ending, and expect the real conversation to happen days later and sideways rather than in the meeting you called. Do not ask them to keep it from siblings or to choose sides in the telling.

Should teenagers have a say in the custody schedule?

Their view is worth asking for and worth taking seriously, particularly because a schedule they resent will not survive contact with a job and a social life. Giving them the decision itself is different, and it puts a choice between two parents on a person who has to keep living with both. In a divorce with teenagers that line is the easiest to blur and the hardest to walk back.