Q. Hi Rabbi Bartfeld. Wanted to wish you and your family a Ksiva V’Chasima Tova!!! I also wanted to ask if I can use my Maaser money to pay tuition for my 22 year old daughter to learn in... Yerushalayim. …. There is also the cost of room and board, which I assume can not be paid by Maaser money. I also wanted to buy Mezuzos for Adina. Can I buy the Klaf with Maaser money?
A. On question 475 of this forum we wrote “you cannot use ma'aser money for payments you are already obligated to compensate, as the Chofetz Chaim in Ahavas Chessed (Ch. 19) writes because "it is like paying one's own debts from ma'aser funds". Although girls schooling and tuition was in former years seen as optional, since in Halacha there is no inherent parental obligation to educate girls in a school, that is not the case today (Igrois Moishe Y.D. 2: 113).
Horav Shlomo Miller's Shlit”a opinion is that it would depend who undertook the obligation to pay the tuition. The one who did so cannot use ma'aser funds for paying that contracted indebtedness.
It could well be that it was the student that signed the registration documents. In that case her parents can use their ma'aser money since they never accepted directly the responsibility of paying tuition.
The Rov maintains that you are allowed to use ma'aser money for purchasing mezuzos for someone else that needs them.
Rabbi A. Bartfeld as revised by Horav Shlomo Miller Shlit”a
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