My Stepson Cheated on His Final University Project. I Don’t Like What I’m Being Asked to Do Next.
Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband was a widower when we met. His son “Kevin” was 17 and his daughter “Ayla” was 13. I didn’t get to know Kevin as well as I know Ayla, and I wasn’t really involved in raising him. I’m worried that might be coloring my opinion now.
We’re helping Kevin pay for college, in combination with loans and his sports scholarship. I’m the higher earner, so it has mostly been me helping Kevin, but I was happy to do it. We also plan to help Ayla when she starts this fall—she picked a cheaper school but got less aid, so the cost for us is the same.
As part of his degree, Kevin’s department has a two-part senior capstone project, one for each semester. His department chair connected him to a prestigious research nonprofit. Well, Kevin used ChatGPT to do his entire fall semester project, burning both his own bridge and the professor’s with the organization. He failed the project and was put on probation for breaking his school’s academic honor code. He was also not allowed to move on to the spring capstone project, because it is intended to build on the fall one. We didn’t know about this until February, when he told us he would need an extra year of school to complete the capstone with next year’s seniors.
Kevin mostly seems upset that he got caught, not that he made a bad choice. We’d have to dip into Ayla’s 529 account in order to pay for his extra year. I think it’s unfair that his sister would get less help from us because her brother cheated. My husband says it would be unfair not to help both kids get an undergrad degree, and he doesn’t want Kevin to be crushed by extra loans because he made a mistake. I pointed out that Ayla will have to take out extra loans if we use her education money to help her brother, but my husband thinks we can find a way to replace that money by the time she needs it. I think Kevin should work and pay for the two remaining classes himself, which would be an unpleasant but important lesson. My husband says that if Kevin can’t afford it and drops out without a degree, he’ll have debt and fewer job prospects. We are in complete disagreement here. How can we work this out?
I agree with you that it would be very unfair if Ayla wound up being shortchanged on tuition help due to Kevin’s cheating. I wouldn’t agree to help Kevin at her expense. If you and your husband would be able to replace the money in her 529 by the time she needs it, that particular objection is moot. But there is still the question of what feels fair to you, and whether you personally are willing to bear the financial consequences of Kevin’s actions.
You mentioned wanting your stepson to learn a lesson—but if the humiliation of being caught, failing his capstone, having to repeat his last year, and telling his parents about what he did is insufficient, I’m not sure that financial suffering will be what finally drives the lesson home. Kevin might feel regret every time he has to make another student loan payment, or he might just feel sulky and resentful toward you and his father. I’m not saying he’d be justified in that, by the way—he’d have only himself to blame! But you have little control over what he feels or thinks or chooses to learn from this, in the end, and people who really want to dodge responsibility will often find a way to do so.
You can’t force Kevin to learn what he should from this, but you do get to make whatever financial decision you think is best. You mentioned that most of your stepkids’ tuition comes out of your income. I think it’s fair to tell your spouse that you don’t want any more money you’ve earned to go toward Kevin’s tuition after he cheated. Your husband can then figure out how much he wants and is able to help his son on his own.
If that’s your decision, though, you have to be able to live with the consequences within your marriage and your family. Which might not feel fair to you—but it’s the way it is, unfortunately. If the potential fallout from cutting Kevin off financially seems like more than you’re willing to deal with, you can consider seeking some other compromise with your spouse—like, say, helping Kevin to the extent you’re able to without touching Ayla’s 529, and letting him take out loans to make up the difference.
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I’m a senior at a local university, commuting from home, and my younger sister is leaving soon for a distant school. Mom’s a single parent and does everything she can to keep us close so that she’s not lonely (this includes asking us to sleep in her bed for weeks at a time, and it’s been this way for years). Now that my sister is leaving and it’s just me, I already feel bad about leaving Mom to do homework on campus or stay after class or anything else that keeps me out of the house. At the same time, I don’t want to be stuck at home with Mom for my entire senior year. Is there any middle ground?