Support after 18
After a child turns 18, Massachusetts can keep child support running to 23 and pays it to the other parent, even while the child is at college
A parent can pay a child's college costs and still owe child support to the other parent for the same months. Massachusetts law lets that support run until the child turns 23, and federal law sets no limit at all. After 18, the money should follow the child.
The age until which a Massachusetts court may order child support for a child in college
The age at which federal law says child support must end, or the rule it sets on who receives it
Massachusetts courts apply this law as written. This page argues it should change, and says which body could change it.
I pay child support in Massachusetts myself, so I have a stake in the outcome. This page describes the law as written and as the Appeals Court has applied it. It is not advice about any case.
The statute is quoted from the Commonwealth's own publication of G.L. c. 208, § 28, and the Guidelines from the 2025 Child Support Guidelines. Case law is described from the Appeals Court's published decisions.
Massachusetts lets a court order support until a child turns 23
The statute gives the court two windows past 18. From 18 to 21, “The court may make appropriate orders of maintenance, support and education of any child who has attained age eighteen but who has not attained age twenty-one and who is domiciled in the home of a parent, and is principally dependent upon said parent for maintenance,” G.L. c. 208, § 28. From 21 to 23 the same order is allowed for a child enrolled in an undergraduate program.
The Guidelines treat both kinds of order as the court’s choice. Support past 18 is discretionary, and so is a contribution to college, which is capped at half of the in-state cost at the University of Massachusetts Amherst unless the judge finds a parent can pay more. The 2025 Task Force heard from parents who asked for support to end at 18 and declined because the discretion comes from the statute, which the Guidelines cannot change.
A child living at college still counts as living with the parent who receives support
The statute requires the child to be “domiciled in the home of a parent.” A dorm does not change that. The Appeals Court treats a student at college as still domiciled with the parent who keeps the family home, so support continues to that parent, Tatar v. Schuker, 70 Mass. App. Ct. 436 (2007).
As Tatar describes the earlier cases, support has run to the other parent even where the father paid all of the child’s tuition, room and board. The court counted the other parent’s home during vacations, the food and the utilities as enough to keep the child principally dependent on her. So a parent can pay for college and still pay the other parent four years of child support so the child has a room for part of the summer. Paying the student or the college makes sense. Paying the other parent for a child who lives at school does not.
Nothing stops a parent from paying for the same months twice
A college order can cover housing and meals, and a support order covers the child’s living costs. For a student living on campus those are often the same months and the same room. The Guidelines’ only instruction is that a court ordering both “shall consider the combined amount,” § II.G.4.
The Guidelines ask a judge to look at the total. They set no rule that one order offsets the other. I found no Massachusetts appellate decision that decides whether a court may order both for the same housing costs, so each judge decides it case by case.
Federal law sets no age at which support ends, so nothing stops a state from choosing any age
The federal rule for child support guidelines, 45 C.F.R. § 302.56, requires that orders rest on ability to pay. It says nothing about how long support runs or who receives it once a child is an adult, and the federal enforcement statute, 42 U.S.C. § 666, is silent on both. A state could order support to 30 or to 40 and nothing in federal law would stand in the way.
Some states already send college money where it is spent. Washington’s statute says the court “shall direct that either or both parents’ payments for postsecondary educational expenses be made directly to the educational institution if feasible,” RCW 26.19.090(6).
After 18, support should go to the child or the college instead of the other parent, even while the child is away at college
Three changes would keep the money with the child:
- After a child turns 18, pay any support to the child or the college instead of the other parent, unless the child actually lives with that parent most of the time. A child away at college does not, and a summer at home does not change that.
- Let a college order replace child support, so a parent pays one or the other.
- End presumptive support at 18 or at high school graduation.
The first two are rules about how guidelines direct and compute an order, which the federal rule already governs, and this project’s petition to the Department of Health and Human Services asks for them. The third changes when a state may order support at all, which in Massachusetts is set by statute. Changing it takes the Legislature, or Congress for a national rule.
Limits
This page describes the law and how the Appeals Court has applied it. It does not predict any case. Each order past 18 turns on its own facts, including where the child lives during breaks and who pays for what. Whether a parent who pays a child’s living costs directly can show the child is no longer principally dependent on the other parent is a question for that parent’s lawyer.