A common question among parents going through a West Virginia divorce is how long child support lasts? It’s generally going to last until the child gets to the point where they’re 18 and graduated from high school. However, a common misunderstanding comes about because some of the language used in an order that says something to the effect of completion of secondary school child support will be paid till. Under West Virginia laws, secondary school is not college. It actually means high school.
If your child is at the point where they’ve graduated from high school and they’ve turned 18, then this will be generally the age at which child support is going to stop. One exception to the age of 18 is if the child has some sort of disability. For example, somebody has an adult guardianship over their child, the child is unable to take care of themselves, then child support can continue beyond that. It can continue basically indefinitely. It just goes on after the child reaches the age of 18 and they’re unable to care for themselves and they’re found to have some sort of disability. However, this would be up for the court to decide.
If a child didn’t graduate, but makes consistent progress towards achieving their high school diploma, the child support is going to continue so long as they haven’t reached the age of 21. However, there are limitations on it. If the child is not making reasonable progress on graduating high school, then this can be brought up in court. You or your ex can make a case in court that the child support payments should stop because the child is not being serious about their studies and so forth.
If you have more than one child, then you’re going to have to go back and reassess the child support payments once one child has graduated from high school. Sometimes the child support amount won’t change that much if anything because the wages may have gone up over the years. Just because the amount of children graduated from high school changes, your amounts could stay the same. Overall, it’s important for you to talk to an attorney and see if you need to potentially go and get the child support modified.
