In most cases, child support ends when a child turns 18. If the young adult is still in high school at this birthday, support for him or her may continue until he or she graduates or reaches the age of 19. In some cases, a parent may be required to help pay for some of his or her grown child's college expenses. But what about a child support and special needs situation?

If you are a parent of a child with special needs, you might have wondered what will happen to your child support agreement once he or she reaches adulthood.

Legal Requirements for Child Support

The Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act addresses the requirements for parents to pay child support for minor children and adult children with special needs. It outlines the factors the court may use to determine a divorcing couple's child support agreement.

Illinois law provides parents who are owed child support many different ways to collect on their debts. Most of these are civil penalties, such as wage garnishments, but for severe cases of unpaid child support, the state can bring criminal charges. Illinois law creates the crime of failure to support, also known as criminal nonsupport, which punishes parents for avoiding their support obligations. Parents who owe or are owed large amounts support should both understand what it takes to trigger a prosecution for criminal nonsupport, as well as the procedure for how they get initiated.

What Criminal Nonsupport Is

Criminal nonsupport is a crime that can be committed in several different ways. First, if a supporting parent has made no payments in more than six months or they have fallen behind on their payments by more than $5,000, then they may be guilty of criminal nonsupport. Second, if the supporting parent has failed to make any payments within a year or is more than $20,000 behind on their payments, they may also be guilty. Finally, a person can also commit criminal nonsupport by leaving the state with the goal of evading child support payments. However, to do that they must have a child support debt of over $10,000 or have made no payments in the last six months.

Divorce is a major life event, and it can often be particularly difficult for children to go through. However, much of that difficulty can be reduced by parents who understand what their child is going through and have been taught how to properly handle these emotional issues. To that end, the Illinois Supreme Court introduced Rule 924. Rule 924 is a requirement that people party to child custody hearings must participate in parenting education classes that has been approved by the courts in the county in which the legal proceeding is taking place. From a practical standpoint, the available classes vary widely in their cost as well as in their format.

The Purpose of Parenting Education

The goal of parenting education classes is to equip parents with the tools they need to make custody issues and the divorce process emotionally easier for the children involved. Each county's approved programs are different, so the curriculum may vary from place to place. For instance, one of DuPage County's approved programs is the Caring, Coping, and Children Program. The core goal of this program is to help parents develop their relationship in a way that is healthiest for the children involved. This includes focusing on developing a “business-like” relationship between the parents, and working with them to put personal conflicts to the side so that they can better interact with the children. The program also contains a motivational component that works with parents to help them put the best interests of their children first. 

Even after going through the entire divorce in court and getting a divorce decree finalized, the process may not be over. The aftermath of a divorce involves a variety of practical issues, among them collecting child support. While many parents readily keep up to date on their support obligations every month, some require legal enforcement or collection activities before they pay their court-ordered sum. One such method of legal enforcement is to use a wage garnishment, also known in Illinois as a wage deduction order. This is a type of court order that pulls the child support payment directly from the supporting parent’s wages without letting it get into their hands.

What Are Wage Garnishments?

Wage garnishments are court orders used to collect a variety of debts. Although they affect the debtor, in this case the supporting spouse, the order is technically a command by the judge to the supporting spouse’s employer. The order requires the employer to deduct some set amount of money from the supporting parent’s paycheck and send it to the other parent. This takes the decision to pay support out of the parent’s hands and makes it automatic. Additionally, if an employer fails to comply with a wage garnishment, the state may fine them up to $100 every day they are out of compliance.

With the cost of college rising and more people attending every year, a common question divorcing parents have is whether a child’s college expenses can be factored into divorce agreements. In Illinois, section 513 of the Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act provides the answer. That section provides that judges may award “non-minor support” in the case of a child’s educational expenses in some circumstances. The law provides guidelines on what factors judges should take into consideration when they decide whether to award support, what the support may cover, and what rights are afforded to the parents in exchange for this support.

Factors Judges Consider

Judges in family court have a wide range of discretion in awarding this sort of support. The law specifically calls out several factors to which they should look in order to determine if the case merits the support, including: