When does child maintenance end?
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When does child maintenance end?
The circumstances of the birth and life of a child determines when child maintenance ends after a divorce. A father does not, for example, have parental responsibility for a child that was born when the parents were not married. Unless he: registered the birth jointly with the mother after December, 2003, both parents had a formal parental responsibility agreement drawn up, a court granted the father legal parental responsibility, the father is appointed as guardian, or the parents marry.
Great article about child maintenance payment obligation. The upshot being that you’ll have to pay for as long as your children are in full time education (not including college or university)
Fair enough I think, although I imagine how some people might actually try and dissuade their children from staying on at school, just to save a bob or two. 
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March 10th, 2008 at 3:08 am
Great useful information. I have a friend who struggled day and night to support his beloved daughter after divorce, however, in this circumstances, it would have been more appropriate if the part for his wife is not necessary.
March 27th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Hmm, that is a very interesting article about the obligation to pay child support. Right now I am paying child support in California but my child is about to graduate high school. I thought I would keep having to pay through college but hearing that college is excluded from the “full time education” concept makes me happy.
June 17th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I think that is not really the best idea and I am not against higher education. However, there is an incentive to make one’s life better and if you know you have to be self reliant then you are going to be better off. Well only time will tell how this plays out.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:38 am
I think that it is fair enough
October 12th, 2008 at 10:59 am
If they are not divorced, parents are not required to support their child through college. It would be nice, but it is not required by law. I don’t thing divorce should change that.
February 3rd, 2009 at 10:35 am
Interesting information. I knew the law had changed but I wasn’t sure when, a friend of my wifes is in the process of getting a divorce and they weren’t married when her son was born. He was born in 2006 so he would be covered by the change in the law.
May 12th, 2009 at 7:29 am
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June 1st, 2009 at 10:33 am
Of course, each state and family is different. Just because it is what “normally” happens, does not mean that it applies to you.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
It certainly may lead to some people trying to put their children off the idea of higher education. Especially whilst people are still struggling so much financially. This is very much a time will tell situation I feel.
December 1st, 2009 at 2:20 pm
In the State of Florida, ordinarily the obligation to support a child ends when that child reaches eighteen, marries, or becomes financially independent. However, child support may continue beyond the child’s eighteenth birthday. If the child is still in high school after turning eighteen and has a reasonable likelihood of graduating, than child support continues until the child graduates, but child support does not continue beyond the child’s nineteenth birthday. In addition to basic child support, the parents have an obligation to pay for daycare expenses and medical expenses of the child.
April 30th, 2010 at 9:12 am
well, this is how it works, parents are obligated to support a child till he or she is big enough to take care of themsevles as its parents who bring them into this world and leave them to suffer!
June 19th, 2010 at 10:09 am
Many couples at the outset of proceedings fail to realise that if they choose to fight it out through the courts to the bitter end, their case can take up to two years to come to final trial, at which they will be cross-examined on oath in the witness box, the minutiae of their lives picked over and noted down by strangers. And they will have to pay for it – not only in terms of legal costs, but in terms of the order a Judge makes which may not be favourable to them; they will have no say in the final settlement at that stage, that will be for the Judge to decide.
July 7th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
I am the mother who lost her children, a girl & boy in a very unfair divorce. I had no money & left the state to find accommodation, left children with grandmother, divorce was filed on the grounds of abandonement. My son graduated from high school in florida on june 3rd, it is july 7th, when does child support stop?? My daughter is 13.