NY
My wifes and i have been divorced for about a year now and i was recently going through papers and noticed some things were brought to my attention. i have found that she has charged me all kinds of money from college tuition that i have already paid for however i found out that the account summarys were printed off of the internet before financial aid was applied and my son was actually attending college for free. I have paid for 3 years of this and i dont know what i am sappose to do or how i am sappose to approach it
My understanding - correct me if I'm wrong:
Your wife provided false information to the court which inflated her costs. The divorce decree says that you were supposed to pay tuition. Since the divorce, you are paying her for tuition, but she has not tuition expense.
Assuming that's correct:
1. You state that you've paid for 3 years, but been divorced for 1. The seniors will correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt if there's anything you can do about the years before you were divorced - even if you were separated - unless those payments were made under court order.
2. If you can prove that she provided the court with false information, you can go back to court to file for contempt. Ask for the tuition payments to stop and for you to be reimbursed for the past year of tuition payments (it certainly won't hurt to ask for all three years, but if she has an even halfway decent attorney, they'll challenge the pre-divorce part).
3. If the false information she provided covers other subjects, as well, you can ask for those to be corrected.
4. You may be able to ask for criminal sanctions against her if you can prove that she knowingly provided false information to the court, but I'd advise against it. First, she can say that she didn't know about the scholarships at the time she presented the info to the court. Second, you'd have to prove that she KNEW the information was false and that's pretty hard to do. Finally, there's no benefit to you and it will escalate animosity.
You should probably confer with an attorney. I don't mean to be offensive, but if you never noticed that type of error until someone pointed out to you, then you shouldn't be handling this on your own. You should seriously consider having a financial advisor to look over ALL your financial issues to see how many other major blunders you might have made. That's not a minor mistake.
How much is the tuition in question and how much longer do you have to pay it?
