Background
After more than a decade of co-parenting under a Clackamas County dissolution decree, Misti Webb (now Brill) moved to modify her child support obligation for her adult daughter, who was enrolled in a nursing program and living with the daughter’s father. The Clackamas County Circuit Court held a hearing and applied Oregon’s Child Support Guidelines (OAR 137-050-0700 to 137-050-0765) to calculate a presumptive support amount: $359 per month from mother and $0 from father, with the zero rebutted on the grounds that the adult child resided with father. So far, so routine.
The complication arose in a separate provision the court added to the supplemental judgment. Citing what it characterized as mother’s agreement at the hearing, the court ordered mother to pay 66 percent of the adult child’s total education costs—tuition already paid and future tuition alike—with father covering 34 percent, proportional to each parent’s share of combined income. Mother appealed, arguing she had never agreed to an indeterminate share of uncapped tuition and that the trial court lacked statutory authority to order education expenses as a freestanding obligation outside the Guidelines calculation.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals reversed the education-cost provision and vacated the guidelines support orders for the adult child, remanding for a complete recalculation. Under long-established Oregon precedent tracing to Wiebe and Wiebe, 113 Or App 535 (1992), and recently reaffirmed in Kim and Kinnersley, 337 Or App 503 (2025), education costs for an adult child attending school under ORS 107.108 are “part of, and not in addition to, a child support obligation.” A trial court has no authority to order a parent to pay college expenses as a separate, freestanding obligation outside the Guidelines framework; ORS 25.280 and OAR 137-050-0700(1) require all amounts—including education costs—to be determined through the Guidelines. The trial court’s statement at the hearing that it had “a lot more discretion” for adult-child support revealed a fundamental legal error and was itself evidence of the plain mistake.
The court also rejected the idea that mother had stipulated to the 66 percent figure. At most, mother agreed to “split” the proposed $405 monthly amount “based on our income percentages”—a bounded statement referring to a specific dollar total that the court repurposed into an open-ended obligation against uncapped tuition costs that were never discussed at the hearing. ORCP 67 F(2) requires all parties to assent in open court before a court may incorporate a stipulation into judgment; mother’s general deference to the court’s discretion, and her agreement to split $405, did not constitute assent to the indefinite percentage-of-tuition arrangement the court ordered. Because the unlawful tuition provision may have influenced the court’s guidelines calculations for the presumptive support amounts as well, the court vacated the entire adult-child support order and remanded for a fresh calculation under the Guidelines—with the instruction that the court may consider education costs as a basis for a guidelines deviation if it follows the required rebuttal-finding process under OAR 137-050-0760(1).
Key Takeaways
- ORS 107.108 does not authorize separate orders requiring parents to pay college expenses in addition to, or independently of, child support calculated under the Child Support Guidelines—all education costs must be run through the Guidelines framework and any deviation from the presumptive amount must be supported by written findings.
- A trial court may account for education costs as a basis to deviate from the presumptive guidelines amount, but must set out the deviation amount and its reasons per ORS 25.280 and OAR 137-050-0760(1); it cannot simply order a percentage of total tuition as a separate line item.
- A parent’s general indication of willingness to split a specific dollar amount at a modification hearing does not constitute an open-court stipulation under ORCP 67 F(2) to an indeterminate, percentage-based tuition obligation that was never discussed.
Why It Matters
Webb is a practical guide for every Oregon family law attorney handling modification proceedings for adult children attending school under ORS 107.108. The statutory pathway is clear: all financial support for such children—monthly support and education costs alike—must flow through the Child Support Guidelines. Courts cannot create a parallel tuition-sharing track by characterizing statements at a modification hearing as a stipulation to freestanding, percentage-based obligations. Practitioners advising clients at those hearings should be alert to the distinction between agreeing to a specific dollar amount (bounded and capped) and agreeing to an open-ended percentage share of total future tuition (potentially unlimited). The opinion also flags, without resolving, the extent to which parties can stipulate to a guidelines deviation beyond the 15-percent safe harbor in OAR 137-040-0765(3)—an open question that may arise in future modification proceedings whenever parents negotiate informal arrangements around college costs.