Child support typically ends when a child reaches age 18. If the child is still enrolled in high school as a fulltime student and living at home with a parent when they celebrate their 18th birthday, in both California and Nevada, support will extend.
In California the support will extend until high school graduation. So, you might say the California rule is age 18 having graduated from high school or graduation from high school having attained age 18, whichever last occurs.
Nevada has kind of a strange twist in its law and it’s a twist that I have not seen the legislature or the Nevada Supreme Court deal with to date. And that is, the literal reading of the statute is if a child turns age 18 and has not yet graduated from high school, then the support obligation goes to age 19. And in that instance it may differ from California in that the child who turns 18 the day before graduating from high school while still living with a parent get supports for one extra day. In Nevada that could go for an extra year.
The exceptions to determination of a support obligation, in one of those states based upon one of those standards, is for, usually for disabled children, for children who are incapable of supporting themselves, usually through a physical or psychological or emotional ability. And those children, if we use that word loosely, are potentially to supported beyond the age 18 standard that we’ve generally been talking about.
Leslie Shaw practices family law in both California and Nevada, and has been involved in close to 1,000 family law matters largely involving litigation throughout his 40 year career. He is also a Certified Family Law Attorney, a status granted by the California Board of Legal Specialization.
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