Parents Avoid Contempt Citation in Daughter’s Tuition Lawsuit
A judge yesterday refused to hold a 21-year-old’s parents in contempt, ruling the parents do not need to pay Caitlyn Ricci’s tuition while they appeal. In addition, the Appellate Division of New Jersey’s Superior Court will now take on the case.
Ricci sued her parents, who are separated, in February 2013. A judge ordered them to pay $16,000 of her daughter’s tuition at Temple in October. Ricci was seeking an injunction that would force her parents to pay it while they appealed or face fines or jail time.
Ricci has come under wide criticism since suing her parents, and the strain showed: “Her grandfather, Matthew Ricci, tried to shield his granddaughter, who has yet to respond to her critics,” Action News notes.
A judge recently ruled Ricci’s parents have to pay $906 of her tuition at Rowan, a school she attended before Temple. She’s been living with her father’s parents, who have long had a rift with their son. The Inquirer includes this paragraph of backstory:
Caitlyn Ricci, 21, sued her parents several months after leaving her mother’s Washington Township home in February 2013. Her parents said that she had been kicked out of “Disney college” – an internship program associated with Walt Disney World in Florida – after she was caught drinking underage, and that she refused to do chores at home. Caitlyn Ricci said she left after a dispute about taking a summer class.
Courts in New Jersey have ruled separated parents have to pay some of a child’s tuition since the decision in Newburgh v. Arrigo in 1982.