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Hi,
My daughter of 18 soon to turn 19 in the next few weeks, has since birth lived with her grandmother. The mother has a council house and occasional daughter sleeps over, I believe the mother is claiming the child benefit.
Daughter has a boyfriend who she seems to stay with most often in another area and I think she still attends college on a non-a-level course.
My question is really....
1) DO I still need to be paying her till she turns 19/20?
2) Even if I was due to pay her and stopped, if she went to CSA at 19 years old would she get anywhere?
Regards
I assume, from what you say, that you don't pay via CMS/CSA at present.
If the mother still claims child benefit, then strictly speaking, you are still liable for maintenance. I can understand why you want to stop, if the mother isn't actually responsible for the maintenance. I suppose, the easy solution is to work out what the CMS would say you should pay, and pay that into a savings account and stop paying maintenance directly and see if she does go to the CMS - if she does, any arrears will be covered by the savings you have built up, but make sure that you pay as soon as the CMS tell you, otherwise you'll be classed as having missed a payment and with then go onto collect and pay, for which you'l have to pay an extra 20%
Hello Fusion2000
Under child support legislation, regular child maintenance payments must be made until a child is 16 years old, or 20 if they are in full-time, non-advanced education (A-level or equivalent), or for as long as Child Benefit is being paid.
However, if your child was 19 after this date and in full-time education, maintenance would be paid until the age of 20. In addition, if arrears have built up on a case, those arrears must still be paid, even if regular child maintenance payments have stopped.
When a child leaves full-time education in the summer, Child Benefit generally continues until the first week of September.
Child Benefit is usually paid to the person with the main care of a child, however, while your daughter’s mother still receives it, she would still be entitled to apply to the Child Maintenance Service. If this happened, they would process the claim and you would be expected to pay in-line with the legislation.
Regards
William
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