If a court ordered you to pay child support to your ex-spouse, you could be paying anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars a month. Regardless of how you feel about the support or whether you think the amount you owe is just, these payments will probably represent a significant financial burden on you, and you’re probably wondering when you’ll be free of your obligation to pay them.
Fortunately, you will not have to pay child support for eternity. At some point, your child will reach an age when you can legally stop making the payments.
In most cases, you can stop paying child support when your son or daughter reaches the age of 18. However, there are circumstances when you may need to continue paying child support beyond the age of 18. For example, if your child continues to live at home and attend high school or enrolls in college, you may need to continue to provide support. The same is true if you have a child with special needs.
Once you have the legal right to stop paying child support, you need to take specific legal steps to terminate the payments. You can’t simply stop paying them once your obligations end. Failure to file the necessary paperwork to terminate your payments could result in legal trouble, fines and other financial obligations.
If you think that it’s time for your child support payments to stop, you need to make sure that you fully understand your situation and how the law applies to it. Your Pennsylvania family law attorney can provide valuable guidance on this issue.
Source: FindLaw, “When Does Child Support End?,” accessed April 25, 2018
