Paying Child Support After Your Child Has Turned 18
Your life changes a lot when you turn 18. From a legal perspective, you are an adult, free to make your own decisions independently of your parents. You can vote in elections, work full time, drive anywhere and anytime you want, and buy and sell property. Your parents might disagree with your style of dress, your employment, your friends, and your online activities, but from a legal perspective, there is little they can do to stop you except try to persuade you to change your mind through incentives, threats, guilt trips, or logical arguments. The fact remains, though, that many young adults are not financially independent of their parents. The Family Law Act of 1990 acknowledges this and provides for many situations where divorced or otherwise unmarried parents must continue paying child support for their young adult sons and daughters for several years after the beneficiaries turn 18. To find out more about child support obligations and how long you can expect to pay them, contact a Mississauga family lawyer.
The End Date for Child Support Is More About Financial Independence Than Age
Ontario family law accommodates the unique circumstances of each family instead of trying to decide all legal matters according to a strict formula. For example, it is possible for divorcing couples to divide their property according to the scheme on which they agree during mediation or in the manner in which a judge deems fairest and most sustainable.
Child support appears at first to be the most formulaic part of family law. You can calculate the amount of your child support according to the Ontario child support lookup table; the law calculates child support according to a mathematical formula involving the family’s expenses and the parents’ respective incomes. The duration of child support is more ambiguous. It lasts until the children become independent of the parents, which is harder to pinpoint than it seems.
Sometimes child support obligations end on the child’s 18th birthday, but that only happens if the 18-year-old has graduated from secondary school and is in the workforce. Young adults who are enrolled full-time in university can continue receiving child support for several more years. When a young adult marries, even if he or she is still a university student, the parents’ child support obligations automatically terminate. Likewise, adults who cannot become financially independent of their parents because of disabilities may receive child support indefinitely.
Paying child support past your child’s 18th birthday is a more likely scenario than terminating your child support obligations when your child is younger than 18, but the latter scenario is also possible. Parents can terminate their child support obligations toward a child who is at least 16 years old and no longer lives with his or her parents.
Contact Zagazeta Garcia LLP About Child Support Obligations
A family lawyer can help you understand your child support obligations and modify your child support amount if it is unaffordable. Contact Zagazeta Garcia LLP in Mississauga, Ontario to discuss your case.
Source:
justice.gc.ca/eng/fl-df/child-enfant/cst-orpe.html
