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Bar News - February 20, 2004 Law Reversing Breault Effective Immediately, Sending Lawyers, Judges Scrambling By: Dan Wise College Expenses & Child Support THE FIRST BILL enacted into law in 2004 removes judicial discretion to order a divorced parent to contribute to an adult child’s college expenses. HB 299 took effect Feb. 2, as chapter 1, Laws of 2004. The following is added to RSA 458:17 as XI-a: "No child support order shall require a parent to contribute to an adult child’s college expenses or other educational expenses beyond the completion of high school." Also, in RSA 458:20, the reference to college is deleted. The new law reverses a NH Supreme Court decision, Re: Breault, handed down last April that reasserted that judges have " the discretion in both original and modified support orders to require divorced parties to contribute to their children’s college education...." The sponsor of the bill that became law, Rep. David Bickford, said that parents should not be obligated to pay for a college education. The attention-getting aspect of HB 299 is that the bill was written to take effect immediately, which sent judges, marital masters and lawyers scrambling to consider its implications for existing child support orders or for divorce cases in progress. Many attorneys are asking whether its provisions can be applied retroactively to revisions of existing orders. Undoubtedly, such issues will be fodder for appeals. Members of the Bar were alerted to the bill’s fast passage to law by Nashua family law practitioner Honey Hastings through the Bar’s email list serv. When the bill became law with an immediate effective date, attorneys wondered whether judges might be unaware of the new law. Joan Bishop, coordinator of the Superior Court, said members of the superior court were alerted by her office via email and fax on the day the bill became law. Bishop said she and Supreme Court General Counsel Howard Zibel monitor the state’s listings of chaptered laws regularly during the session and she communicates urgent changes to the judiciary. Most new laws, she observed, have an effective date some months distant; HB 299 was a special case. Bishop said all but two of the superior court judges and masters have access to email, although not all of the judges personally open their email—some have clerks open email and print it out for them, she said. Bishop and Thomas Edwards, who heads up the courts’ information technology office, provided insights into how information in the 21st century is processed by the judicial branch. Although Edwards sought to correct the misperception that attorneys have better access to new caselaw through the slip opinions email list serve than the judges do, he acknowledged that courthouse computers lack access to searchable databases of caselaw and statutes. Here’s why: for network security reasons, judges’ offices and other workstations in the courthouses do not have access to the Internet, but they do have email access. This means the judges and other court personnel are notified of court decisions through the Supreme Court list service at the same time as the other subscribers to the list. However, computer users in the courthouse cannot click on the email link and obtain it from the judiciary home page on the state’s Web site. Instead, they have a secure connection to a server that has its own version of the court’s Web site. However, that Web site is sealed off from the rest of the Internet. As a result that site cannot link to the court’s Web site search engine — which is accessed through software that resides on another Web site— or to the Bar’s Web site, which offers searchable access to opinions through Casemaker. Edwards said the issue of access to the search engine is an issue being investigated by his office. NHBA President Russell Hilliard said he has also communicated with the judicial branch to see if there was a way to add a link to the Bar’s Web site so that judges could access Casemaker and other resources, including the draft criminal jury instructions and 3jx orders that are posted on this site under Publications/ NH Supreme Court 3JX Panel Orders. (FYI: The non-citable 3JX orders are posted in the Publications portion of the Web site, grouped by month of issue. The criminal jury instructions are posted in the "For Members" area, requiring a user name and password.) Ironically, in that same week, the NH Supreme Court issued two other rulings regarding child support on similar issues. In Barrett v. Coyne [2003-101], the court ruled that a divorced parent, under "special circumstances," may be required to pay for private school tuition. In Jacobson v. Tierney [2003-093], the court said a father’s obligation to pay child support expenses to the mother of a disabled adult child ended after the child turned 18. After turning 18, the child had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and the court, in a 3-2 decision, said the parent could not be ordered to pay support after the original support order had expired.
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