So do we pay their medical bills the same way?
I'm trying. We haven't figured. That out yet.
We still have.
And I think we still muddle through this
every time.
Yeah, every time.
That's bad
because our kids our kids are like, Do I ask Dad? Yes.
Emergency room visit. Because.
And it's funny because the kids always ask.
My adult kids, they say, Is that deductible?
Yeah. Yeah.
Can you tell me if the deductible. Right.
Yeah.
Hello, this is Darren.
And this is Paige.
And this is where Lemonade.
Where we talk about what happens when life through you, lemons.
You make some lemonade.
Maybe some weeks. It's lemons.
Yeah, some weeks it's just lemons.
Yeah.
On today's episode.
We are going to talk about co-parenting money and adult children.
Sounds interesting.
Okay, We're we're at a stage
in our lives where of the ten kids that we have,
we have one child left.
All the rest are adults. Yep.
We have two kids at home, but one is 18 and one is 17.
And he will be graduating in a month and a half.
Yeah.
So I know Paige is going to have a rough time.
We're not getting a dog to fill the void.
Not yet.
No, not yet.
So. So with with a lot of changes
in our lives, we we, we've run into a couple of situations where,
hey, co-parenting and money and then adult children to pay for things
like weddings or college or even trips home to visit us.
All these things are are things we have to deal with
that most families don't have to deal with.
When you've got co-parenting going on and things like that.
So it can get a little tricky.
It can.
And, you know, do you do you still work with your ex on
these things when your kids turn 18, or do you put the kids in the middle
and go, well, I'm done paying for things,
so maybe talk to your mom or talk to your dad about that.
You know what I mean?
It's a it can be a tricky thing.
It can.
So you the research department of where is eliminate, which is paid?
There's not a whole lot of information.
Usually I find several articles on what I want to talk about for our podcast.
And there was not several articles.
In fact, the only article you found was a was a law.
It was really a marketing thing.
It was like call one 800 lawyer and we'll help you with these.
And then it talked about why you would want to call them.
And you know, and it talked a little bit about
you know, in their in their state.
I don't remember what state this was in.
You know, what what happens when a kid turns 18.
So the only thing I could find was like, read it
articles of people that were talking about it.
But I didn't find any written published
articles on this topic.
So what spurred would spurred you to come up with this topic?
Was it something on Facebook or was it our own experience?
What was it? A Both.
Both.
We've had our own experience, which we will get into in a minute.
And then I looked on our
Facebook Blended Families group and people were talking about this
and how do we handle this when the kid turns 18
and they still need things and they still might need, you know,
financial support or, you know, how do you how are you dealing with this? So.
So so it is a little different in each state.
But most states have a child is still under
the parenting agreement, which means child support is paid and split
costs
on extracurriculars, whatever the court order is.
But most of it is when they're 18
and they graduate from college or a high school or 19 years old.
So yeah, you have to.
So we had one case where Julianne was 17 when she graduated from high school,
so we still had to pay
for her extracurriculars for a couple more months until she turned 18.
Right.
But in the case of many of our other kids,
they actually turned 18 well before they graduated.
But they were still part of the parenting agreement
until they graduate from high school.
Yep, that is true.
So when that happens to your kids, when your child graduates from high school.
It's a party.
Is that it? That's it. You're done.
You're done.
That's it.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, it's an interesting thing, so.
Well, you this is something that maybe when you get divorced,
when your kids are little,
you do not think
about putting anything about this in your divorce decree,
about what happens when your child turns 18.
We we actually did in mine,
we actually set up a
it was called an educational trust for the kids
because we knew they were we
we had the benefit of one of our kids was already 17 when we got divorced.
So we knew, hey,
I got to pay for school or missions or, you know, weddings,
whatever the case may be.
So we actually set up a trust and put money into that trust every month
that later on got dissolved,
which turned out to be good and bad.
Right? Right.
Because if the trust was still there, then there's no questions.
When they're adults, the money's already been set aside.
But in your case, everything in the trust was
from your income, from your.
Well, because my ex didn't have an income. Right.
But I'm just saying, you know,
that changes over time.
Right. Yeah, that's true.
So I was kind of glad when it was dissolved because,
you know, then it was more of an equal balance.
But now every time there's an event like a wedding,
you know, I'm
not communicating with my ex how much money I'm putting on.
Right.
Our kids get put in the middle.
Yeah, they do.
Instead of saying, Hey,
there's a certain amount of money allocated for weddings from the trust, so.
Right.
It's it's a double edged, you know, there's benefits and.
And. Right.
So do you think it would be beneficial to put something
specific in the divorce decree for when your kids turn 18?
I think so. Do you think that's a good idea?
I think so.
It would alleviate some of the awkwardness that happens sometimes.
Yeah.
Because like I said, when your kids are little,
you don't think about, okay, so your kid turns 18, your kid goes to college.
First of all, you have to decide who's paying for college is a kid.
Pain is the mom pain? Is that pain, Evil pain. Right.
Who's doing that then?
How about health insurance?
Is the person still paying for health insurance?
What about when your kid goes to the doctor?
We will talk about this and have a huge bill.
Are you splitting that?
So, yeah, let's talk about health insurance,
because this one, this one's an interesting one because of Obamacare.
Now kids can stay on their parents insurance until they're 26 years old.
Correct.
Now, because I have to carry insurance for the kids that are in the house,
all the kids that are adults have just stayed on my insurance.
That was in the court decree
for the for the parenting agreement
that I had to provide health insurance for the kids.
But when they turned adult, it didn't cost me any more
to continue keeping them on my insurance.
Right.
So they just did.
Yeah, but what that means is that's until they're 26.
So if they do get a big bill
and we haven't met our deductible yet, who's going to pay for that?
Who's going to pay for that?
So, yeah, these are all these are all questions that I like
I said, when you're getting divorced
and you have little kids, you don't think about any of these things,
but it's going to come and you got to figure it out.
Well, but they're adults now.
So because our child turned 18, they now have to pay
for their medical insurance and their medical bills.
And. No, but what about when they're 25?
Well, that's different.
That's At what age is it different?
Well, we have always kind of had a for us,
like we pay for the kids cell phone, even through college.
We've paid for them.
When for us, it was when you get married, if you're if you're
responsible enough to get married, you can pay your own phone bill.
Or when you graduate from college.
Or when you graduate from college, that's kind of been our boundary, right?
Like we'll pay for your cell phone
and we pay, you know, obviously they're on our medical insurance.
So do we pay their medical bills the same way?
I'm trying. But we haven't figured. That out yet.
We still have.
I think we still muddle through this
every time.
Yeah, every time. That's bad
because our
kids our kids are like, Do I ask Dad? Yes.
Emergency room visit because and it's funny because the kids always ask
my adult kids, they say, Is it deductible?
Yeah. Yeah.
Can you tell me if the deductible.
Right. Yeah.
So yeah, it's it's interesting.
Okay. So, so.
That's something we, we probably should have established with the kids up front.
Right. Look, will pay.
I'll pay for your insurance, but I'm not paying for your medical bills or am intel.
But then is that a decent.
Does that dis what's the right word?
Demotivate them from finishing college.
We say.
I don't think so, but let's talk about that for a second.
Okay.
So something that happened with us so with us recently is
our daughter who's in college.
She was coming home at Christmas and your ex
said, can you please pay for half of her flight?
Right.
And so this was a this was an interesting one for us because we were like,
normally we would be like, sure, no problem.
But the flight had already been booked.
We didn't have any input.
You could have used points like, you know, all those things.
We were like, do you know? I mean, like.
So yeah, there was almost like this assumption, Well, you have to pay
half, right?
And I think it was just because I don't think it was anything.
It wasn't malicious. Malicious?
No, It was just like, well, this is what we do.
We split these things and then we were sitting there going,
Well, you know, if, if I if we're going
to be asked to pay for things which we don't have a problem with that,
do we get some input on that type of thing.
Do we get an input on how much the flight is?
I could use.
Points or or when the flight comes in. Right.
So we get it. Do we get any say?
And then another thing that happened very shortly after that when we were still
trying to decide if we were going to, you know, reimburse
your ex,
that that same daughter went to.
She she had an emergency.
She had an emergency. She went to the she went to the E.R..
And of course, at the beginning of the year, when the deductible
is zero, Right.
Where we haven't got any part of the deductible. Yes.
So she went to the E.R.
and it was I think the total bill ended up being 500 and something dollars.
And so then we were like, okay, so
do we now ask your ex to pay for half of that?
Do we just you know what I mean?
Like, we were we were sitting here in this.
Conundrum.
Conundrum of and I think we've probably been in this conundrum before,
but it's been because there was a such a big.
Age, there's a six year gap.
We have forgotten what we were what we did.
Well, early part of me on the on the health insurance side,
we always meet our deductible with as many people as we have on there.
Yeah,
but that's not going to be the case coming up soon, right, Because.
the less people we have. On it, we have on it.
So in the past it's like, well, we're going to meet the deductible anyway.
We might as well just pay it because we're going to hit the deductible, right?
So right stuff.
But that's not going to be the case moving forward.
Right?
Because so we kind of we kind of just made the decision that,
well, if we'll pay the medical bill and even our daughter was like,
she didn't want to ask us if we were paying.
So she called and she was like, So I got a notice
that this is overdue, so I need to pay that right.
Our kids are so they're so funny.
They won't just come out and say, Can you pay this?
Or are you or are you paying this?
You know, just are you going to pay this or do I need to pay this?
So we told her, we'll take care of it.
She's 18.
Of course we'll take care of it.
So I think we decided that.
If we decided on a case by case basis, case.
By case, I guess I don't know.
But we decided that we were not going to reimburse her ex
for the plane flight because we're still paying
for medical insurance and the medical bills.
So we thought that was fair.
I don't know.
It's funny because nothing's written down.
No, because this is outside the realm of the parenting group.
Yeah. So that's a good question.
I don't want to have anything written down. Right.
Because that becomes some kind of legal I don't know
if that was a legal contract, but there's expectations there.
Right?
So this one's.
And dental, we still pay for dental for kids with college kids.
We pay for their phones.
So well, not. To a certain point.
Then they they have to start reimbursing us.
They can see, you know, I'm saying in college, we pay for their phones.
Yeah, yeah, we pay for their phones, we pay for their dental,
but yes, like we said, when you get married
or you graduate college,
you got to start.
But we're not paying for college.
We do not pay for college.
We pay for one year of college.
Right after our kids get back from their mission.
We pay for for a year of tuition for college.
Yeah. So this is this one's a tough one.
I wonder how the kids feel, because before all this stuff has been taken care of
for them, because it's
been part of the parenting agreement right now, there's a lot of foggy
D things in the middle, and now they're in the middle trying to navigate this.
So I wonder how that is for them.
I mean, our kids don't even pay for their own gas, which some of you may
just be gasping right now, thinking our kids are entitled.
They are.
They are entitled.
But the reason why, especially for your kids, is
we pay for we have the car, we pay for the repairs, we pay
for the registration, and then your ex pays that pays for their gas.
Right.
And that was that's an agreement that we have with.
Right. With my spouse in agreement And yeah.
So now like I can't remember what we did with our other we're not I mean I'm
not I'm really not paying for their gas when they come home and use our cars.
I read an agreement about that. Yeah.
So this is an interesting one because I don't think any of our kids
have come home after their first year for that summer.
Most of them after their first year of college, they went off on a mission.
I'm trying to think so.
We have a daughter coming home this summer and she's going to be working.
Yeah.
And we don't have a car for her to use by herself.
She has to share with her brothers. Yeah.
So that out.
They got to figure that out.
Yeah. She's not, she's not plan on the car.
She's plan B on the car. Yeah. Right. Right.
So this,
this summer is going to be an interesting summer
when it comes to figuring out who's paying for gas, who's paying for that.
And yeah, there's a point where I have to say, well, you know, you're an adult,
you're making you're using the car to go make money.
You should be paying for your own gas.
Yeah. I'm not going to make you pay for insurance.
No, of course not.
Because they're. Using. One of our cars.
And I mean, that's up to her If she wants to talk to her mom about paying gas.
Right. Like, but we're not paying for our gas.
But yeah, so that's an interest. So yeah.
And things like that, like, you know, if they need if they're.
So what if she comes home.
Okay, She's 18, almost 19.
She turned 19 next week and says my computer broke.
I need a new computer. that's too bad.
So she would have to buy her own computer.
I'll help her. I'll help her select one.
But she's got to buy her own computer. She's got plenty of money to do that.
Yeah, that's true. So?
So if our kids have their own, if they have a good enough
little pot in the bank.
Well, and then the other side is
if they don't have enough money, then I'm like, dumb.
Why don't you have enough money?
You should have, you should have.
You can use one of our computers, but not a laptop.
You can use one of the computers in the kitchen or.
Okay, so like if our kids that are in high school,
we give them a right when they're whatever age we give them a phone.
14 I think we give our kids a cell phone right.
And if
it says if it's a really terrible phone,
maybe we eventually upgrade them to something slightly better,
but nothing more than a couple of hundred dollars.
I think it's I don't understand when kids, teenagers,
are walking around with 1500 dollars phones.
I don't understand that.
But most of the time we don't buy him a phone.
They just use our old phones. Yes.
And that's why I was saying, like Sam, his phone broke.
He got into a hot tub with his phone
and we said, okay, well, here's
our old phones that you can choose from or you can go buy.
Your. Own, your own.
And he chose to go buy his own.
I mean, it's not a great phone at all,
but that's what. He chose.
And that's what we would still do.
Like David right now, he also has a phone that is broken
because he dropped it or something. How?
And we were like, Well, here are your options.
You can.
He chose to just stick with what he has. Yes.
But he does he it's it's I think he's at the point of no return right now
because it's not even charging. So he
I think he wants your old phone about now because he doesn't want to buy one.
And we were like that's fine.
Choose from the plethora of old phones we have here.
So maybe that's what we do with our adult children too.
If, if they need something, we're like, Well, this is what we have.
This is what we're offering. If it's not, you know what.
You have, It's not what you want.
Then go take care of it yourself. Yes, yes.
And we don't like to buy our kids computers, especially if they're
going to go on a mission, because
when that will get them a computer, when they get back from their mission.
Yeah. Things change so quick. Yeah.
And that's always kind of a present.
We've got the kids when they get back from their mission,
we do buy them a new computer
anyway, so.
Yeah, but car insurance, I mean, we we still pay
all the car insurance
well.
And we pay car insurance before and, and then
we got reimbursed sometimes or No, we never did not Car insurance.
No, never. No. No. I think that was injured.
I think that was in your divorce decree
that you would take care of the cars, right? No.
it's not. It's not. We just did.
We just did. Okay.
Okay. Well, that's interesting.
Yeah. So, yeah, we we.
So this is a tough one for for adults.
And you know what? Frankly, I think
our society today has been catering
to these young adults too much
because look at how many people
their kids are in college and they still pay for everything.
So I can't imagine how it is with the co-parenting
when you get that, because you have no there's no legal responsibility.
Right.
Once they're 18 and graduated from high school or 19, that's yeah.
Ah, you don't have to pay for anything. Right.
And like I said, I think that at times that puts the kids in the middle
because they know that that legal responsibility is gone, is gone.
And now they're like.
Well, this can this can also
mothers have things like kids playing their parents against each other.
Hey, I need $400 for this thing at school.
And then they go to the other parent and ask for the same 400.
Yeah.
Well, good for them if they figure that.
All right.
You know, I'm going to I'm going to visit
Mom more than dad because Mom's actually paying for things.
That might happen.
Well, it yeah, absolutely might happen.
It might happen.
But yeah, it's very interesting.
But we have to be very careful about putting kids in the middle,
because sometimes you make decisions about
are you making the decision because best for the child or are you
making that decision because you're trying to still stick it to your ex?
Do you I mean, be careful.
These are don't I know.
But I'm just saying I think you can still get in the middle of that.
Your and do you know what I mean of that still like.
Well just because they turn 18.
Yeah you know flip of a switch even though legally Right.
That was interesting so when I was told me they have a
a nephew that is Down's syndrome.
So when he turns 18, he's an adult.
So the parents had to go to court to,
to actually, you know, get rid of his.
I know what's the right word. He can't take care of himself.
So he had. Guardianship.
So yeah, guardianship.
So his parents had to do that when he was 18.
Otherwise they had no say in what to me, that's, you know, interesting.
Just on your birthday, all of a sudden
your parents have no guardianship over you at all anymore.
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of crazy.
So and then there's the issue of, like,
David is is our last one at home.
Right?
He he's going to be is he's going to be a senior next year.
So we, we have you have always come up with the schedule Right.
And then your ex approves it and and you know you you know we change things.
As they. Negotiate
and we were talking to our college daughter who's coming home.
And you had mentioned her.
You were like, yeah, I only have to do one more summer scheduled this summer
because then next summer David will be 18, he'll be graduated.
And she was like, Why aren't you going to do a schedule?
And you're like, No, don't have to.
And she goes, That's just that's that stress.
I think that stresses them out because if there's a schedule,
then they're not hurting anyone's feelings.
They're just going to follow the schedule.
And well.
In our adult children
that are already out, they take advantage of that schedule
that we have with the younger kids that are under the parenting agreement still,
because they just follow it.
They just do whatever the hell not. It's not as
strict as you know. No.
But the older they get, the less they follow it.
But they
I think they still appreciate that we had it
and so that they could follow It makes things a lot easier.
Like, okay, we'll be with you Monday and Tuesday and then we'll be with mom,
you know, Wednesday and Thursday like that.
Just it makes things a little easier.
So this is going to be very interesting next year.
Yeah, she said, she says, well she goes, if it were me
she was, I would make up a schedule.
I mean like just like, here's the schedule that I'm going to.
So we'll see.
We'll see what she does this summer
because she doesn't have to adhere to the schedule that we come up.
She doesn't I think she plans to mostly follow it, but but be a little.
Flex, you. Know, flexible.
Yeah, I think that that's what she's.
So this is an interesting transition for us.
It really is.
I'm excited about the transition.
I think I've more excited than you are.
Yeah.
When we were just walking today and I said in five months,
half the time we're going to be.
Empty.
Nest, empty nesters, which I know a lot of blended families.
You've been doing that for years and years while we've always had Sam full time.
So we've always we've always had somebody here.
So it's going to be new for us to be.
And I'm just like.
And then nine months later.
David Yeah, or a year later, a year.
Later, yeah.
David David's going to be gone.
Will be full time empty nesters.
Yeah, well, our grandkids were coming to visit.
That's right.
And as you can see, if what you need to take away from
this episode is we really don't have things worked out.
No. As we
have told you in many of our episodes, we are not experts now.
We are. Living free.
We are just sharing our experiences as we're going through it.
And as you can tell, even though we have done this whole
adult thing, how many times we're still like, What should we do?
How do we handle this?
Like. Well, sometimes it depends on the kid.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Sometimes it does.
So yeah.
So we are just still trying to figure it out.
Still trying to figure it out.
All right.
Or lemonade.
More of the week has to do with a once in a lifetime experience, At least for me.
This is something I've always wanted to experience.
Yes. So, Darren, was he really wanted
to go see the total eclipse now?
I was hesitant, Yeah, because
we got back the week of the total eclipse or the week before, I guess.
Anyway, we got back from Europe on a Tuesday night
and you wanted to
then leave on Saturday morning at 5:30 a.m.
to leave again to go to Texas to see the eclipse.
And I was just like,
boy. Well, I just want you to experience seeing a stack of rocks
at Stonehenge and then seeing a big rock move in front of the sun.
That's all I wanted.
You know,
exhilarating.
Seeing the stack of rocks at Stonehenge.
Exhilarating.
Well, what about the big rock in front of the sun?
That was cool.
That was. That was actually very. That was.
It was awesome.
But I am I am glad that we decided to do it because it was so it was funny.
We get there and, you know, luckily
the total eclipse was in Austin, where our grandbaby is and our.
Daughter, son and daughter. In law.
And then we had another daughter and her husband coming
because they wanted to see the eclipse.
So we were going to be visiting with them for the weekend.
But the morning of the eclipse.
It was cloudy. Complete cloud cover.
And we're sitting there going and our son in law said,
we're not going to get to see it.
And I you know, I was just like, you know what?
It's still been a great weekend.
We have been able
to spend this weekend with her grandbaby is just about the cutest thing
on the planet. He's so cute.
Now check out our website.
You can see pictures.
he's adorable.
And we got to spend time with our kids.
And so it was great.
And then like 30 minutes before the total eclipse,
the clouds part completely.
Yeah. I was.
Pretty angry until about 10 minutes after the eclipse
clouds back like,
It was
it was much more moving than I thought it was going to be.
It was. It was it was really cool.
I mean, it got dark, The birds stopped chirping.
It was cool.
It was super cool. So cool.
But even if we would have not have seen the eclipse,
we still got to spend time with our family, play with that keyboard.
If you like today's episode.
Give us five stars on iTunes, Spotify, Google.
And head to Facebook and like us.
And check out our blog at wheresthelemonade.org.
Where you can leave questions and comments.
Add. But most of all.
Go out and make some lemonade. You betcha, baby.