What Age Does CSA Stop? It Is Not Eighteen

What Age Does CSA Stop? When Maintenance Ends

Part of: Child Maintenance Lawyer

What age does CSA stop? Not at 18, which is the answer most parents expect. Payments run while your child is under 16, or under 20 if they stay in approved education or training, and they end when your child leaves that education or turns 20, whichever comes first (GOV.UK). The letters are out of date as well. The Child Support Agency no longer takes new applications, so the Child Maintenance Service runs the statutory scheme today. Our child maintenance lawyers assist and advise parents on both sides of that ending.

This guide on what age does CSA stop covers England and Wales. The same statutory scheme runs in Scotland, with differences of its own, while Northern Ireland has a separate service with its own contact details (GOV.UK: contact).

Reviewed by: Hannah Overton, Complex Children Specialist & Client Support, Kabir Family Law

What age does CSA stop under the law?

At what age does CSA stop? The statute never gives one age. It defines a child as somebody who “has not attained the age of 16”, or who “has not attained the age of 20 and satisfies such conditions as may be prescribed”. So the age at which CSA stops is 16 for a school leaver and up to 20 for a student. What the young person does fills the whole gap between them.

Those “prescribed conditions” are worth following, because they explain everything that comes later. The child support regulations say the condition is that the young person is “a qualifying young person as defined in section 142(2) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992” (SI 2012/2677, reg 76(1)). That section hands the detail to the Child Benefit rules, and those rules set the dates. In other words, a benefits regulation answers the question of what age CSA stops, not family law, and that is why the answer catches parents out.

Does CSA stop at 16, at 18 or at 20?

Eighteen is the age everyone guesses, and it is the one age that does nothing here. A birthday on its own changes very little. Sixteen matters because that is when the automatic part ends, and 20 matters because nothing runs past it. So when does the CSA stop for a school leaver? At 16, unless they carry on.

So CSA stops at 16 where a young person leaves education then, and it can run on to 20 where they stay in approved education or training (GOV.UK: eligibility). Between those two points the status can switch more than once. A young person who leaves at 17, works for a year and then returns to a college course is not in the same position throughout, and the paperwork has to keep up.

One more limit is easy to miss. Your child needs a place on the course before they turn 19. A course started after that birthday does not extend anything, however long it lasts.

What counts as approved education or training?

Whether CSA stops at 16 or runs on to 20 turns on this one question, so it deserves more attention than the age does. Education has to be full-time, which GOV.UK measures as more than an average of 12 hours a week of supervised study or course-related work experience. Where a young person has an illness or disability, fewer hours can be appropriate for them.

• Usually counts. A levels and similar qualifications, T Levels, GCSEs, Scottish Highers, National 5s, and most vocational qualifications up to level 3.
• Usually does not. An “advanced” course such as a university degree or a BTEC Higher National Certificate, and any course an employer pays for.
• Watch the apprenticeships. The vocational list excludes intermediate and advanced apprenticeships, and approved training has to stay unpaid.
• Home education. It can count where it began before your child turned 16, or after 16 where they have special educational needs and disabilities.

The full list, including the training schemes that qualify in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, sits on GOV.UK. Read it before you assume a course qualifies, because the label on the prospectus and the label in the rules are not always the same word.

When do I stop paying CSA after a course ends?

Here is the detail almost nobody hears. Payments do not end on the last day of term. They end on the next “terminal date”, and there are only four in the year. When does CSA finish for a young person who has just left college? On whichever of those comes next.

1. Your child turns 16. The automatic stage ends. From here the answer depends on what they are doing, not on their age.
2. You tell the Child Benefit Office. Maintenance follows Child Benefit, so that is the office to tell when a young person stays on, starts a new course or leaves one early.
3. The course runs. While it qualifies, the calculation carries on, and the annual review still happens.
4. The course finishes. The clock now runs to the next terminal date: the last day of February, May, August or November, whichever first occurs after education or training ceased (reg 7(2), Case 1).
5. Exams change the reckoning. Where a young person is entered as a candidate for an external examination, the period runs to the terminal date after the last of those examinations instead.
6. The 20th birthday caps it. Nothing runs past 20: GOV.UK says payments stop after that birthday, and the regulation ends the period in the week including the last Monday before it.
7. Both parents hear about it. When a calculation ceases, the Secretary of State must notify the paying parent and the parent with care immediately, so far as that is reasonably practicable (SI 2012/2677, reg 27(1)).

An example shows the gap. A young person who sits their last exam in June does not finish for maintenance purposes in June. The next terminal date is the last day of August, so payments run through the summer. Parents who budgeted for July are the ones who ring us.

What age does CSA stop in your case?

Pick the line that sounds like you, then tick what is already true. Nothing here is a calculation, there is no score, and your answers stay on your screen.

What can stop CSA earlier than the usual age?

Several things end it before the birthday you had in mind, and most of them have nothing to do with how old your child is.

• Marriage or a civil partnership. Somebody who is or has been party to one is simply not a child under the Act, and that includes a void marriage or civil partnership.
• Paid work. The condition is not met where the young person is “engaged in remunerative work” in any week during the prescribed period (reg 76(2)).
• Other financial support. Receiving certain other support in any week has the same effect.
• Moving up or getting funded. Starting an advanced course, or one an employer pays for, ends it.
• Leaving the UK. The service has to be told when a child no longer lives here.

Reporting matters as much as the event itself. There are changes you must report by law, and you should report them as soon as they happen (GOV.UK). Somebody who does not give information they are asked for, or gives information they know to be false, can be taken to court and fined up to £1,000. An honest mistake by a paying parent about their income is treated differently, and GOV.UK says so plainly.

Some families need more than the statutory scheme can do. For a disabled young person, our guide to maintenance over 18 for disabled children covers what changes. Where school fees, a lump sum or property for a child are in question, that sits under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989 instead. If the circumstances behind an existing court order change, our guide to varying a maintenance order explains the route.

What happens to arrears after payments stop?

Parents usually ask when CSA payments stop and expect that to be the end of the money. Ending the ongoing liability does not wipe out the rest, though. GOV.UK puts it flatly: a paying parent might still need to make payments after regular maintenance stops where they have missed payments in the past. So the letters can keep arriving long after the last school day.

Enforcement of an old balance usually runs through a liability order, which is a court order recording that a parent did not pay a given amount for a given period, and which can be registered in the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines (GOV.UK guidance). A credit file is a slow thing to repair. Equally, a receiving parent who assumes the debt died with the case may be writing off money that is still collectable.

If you disagree with a decision about a live case, there is a route for that. Ask for a mandatory reconsideration first, then appeal. Our guide to the child maintenance tribunal sets out what the panel looks at and how long it tends to take.

Frequently asked questions: What age does CSA stop

General information about the law in England and Wales, not advice on your circumstances.

Expert Tip

Parents ask what age CSA stops and expect a birthday. Put the four terminal dates in your calendar instead, then work backwards from the month your child’s course actually ends. Tell the Child Benefit Office the moment anything changes, because a late report is the most common reason a balance builds up quietly on one side and a payment stops unexpectedly on the other. Five minutes now saves a long argument in August.

Iblal Iqbal, Partner & Family Law Strategist