Child Support

Child support is a fact of life when a marriage breaks down and there are children involved. One of the recent areas of concern in family court is whether a parent must support an adult child who repudiates the relationship between them. One of the more common areas is whether or not attendance in a post-secondary institution will be a sufficent reason to entitle the child to support from a parent. As a result of a seminal case in British Columbia in the early 1990’s, courts now consider a number factors in determining this issue because child support is simply not a conclusion which follows automatically from proof of attendance at the institution. Relevant factors include the following: (1) whether the child is in fact enrolled in a course of studies and whether it is a full-time or part-time course of studies; (2) whether or not the child has applied for or is eligible for student loans or other financial assistance; (3) the career plans of the child, that is, whether the child has some reasonable and appropriate plan or is simply going to college because there is nothing better to do; (4) the ability of the child to contribute to his own support through part-time employment; (5) the age of the child; (6) the child’s past academic performance, that is, whether the child is demonstrating success in the chosen course of studies; (7) what plans the parents made for the education of their children, particularly where those plans were made during cohabitation; (8) in the case of a child who has reached the age of majority (19 years), whether or not the child has unilaterally terminated the relationship with the parent from whom support is sought. In this seminal case, the court denied child support because the child was proceeding at a leisurely pace through the university system. In other words, the child had nothing better to do.