Age child support ends

p00

My sons first daughter was 20 in June this year.  He has always paid support to her mother.  He has received yet another raise in payments since her 20th birthday. We dont know if she is at university (unfortunately unlikely) although it may be possible she is doing some sort of open learning. Contact has been limited for several years so information isnt there.
When do these payments stop. Surely she is an adult now. He doesn't mind supporting her to a degree but we assume the payments still go to her mother.
Also how does he appeal this decision ( after 30 days). Surley the CSM know her age.
Thank you for your help.
P00 xx

Caz3121

according to this link the receiving parent should report when the child leaves full-time education (up to and including A Level) or reaches the age of 20
https://www.gov.uk/manage-child-maintenance-case/changes-you-need-to-report
assuming no arrears then the case would be closed at the latest when she was 20 but sooner if left non-advanced education

tacpot12

It is quite possible that there are some arrears, but if there are, he should ask for their evidence of when these arrears arose. If his daughter is 20, and there are no arrears, he should remind the service that payments should have stopped. 

p00

tacpot12 said:

It is quite possible that there are some arrears, but if there are, he should ask for their evidence of when these arrears arose. If his daughter is 20, and there are no arrears, he should remind the service that payments should have stopped. 

There are no arrears except apparently the month you pay in arrears. Hes been paying since she was 2 ( so for 18 yearsand not seen her fir 16 years despite trying) and its now gone up another £20 to £380 a month. The annoying thing is she doesn't even live with her mother and hasn't for a long while but the CSM said he has to prove that. Cant be done as they live over 100 miles away.
I thought I understood it to be age 20 but he seems to think that as he hasn't appealed it within 30 days he will have to pay for the year.
P00 xx

tacpot12

I've just found out that Child Maintenance also continues while a parent is receiving child benefit. (The parent should not be receiving child benefit if the child is living independently UNLESS they are also giving the child the child benefit or equivalent support). So if the mother is still receiving child benefit, it may not be possible to challenge this. He could of course report the other parent for benefit fraud if he thinks the child is not living with the parent. A link to do so is here:https://www.gov.uk/report-benefit-fraud

I expect that it will take a quite a while for any investigation to occur, and if the investigation finds that the parent has been paying the Child Benefit over to the child then no fraud has occurred. Your son might also consider paying a private investigator to gather evidence to show that his daughter is living independently of her mother. The CMS might not accept the evidence, but lodging a complaint with this evidence would entitled him to a refund of money that he paid, but which she was not entitled to, once they have completed their own investigation.   

Although the CMS will set a deadline for appeals from the date of any Mandatory Reconsideration , you can appeal at any time providing you have a good reason, such as if new information becomes know to you that shows an error has been made. The CMS will not want an error to persist longer than necessary. 

This link describes the process for asking for a Mandatory Reconsideration and then appealing. 
https://www.gov.uk/manage-child-maintenance-case/complaints-and-appeals

p00

I see that child benefit stops at 20 anyway.. So at that age you  must become an adult even though you can vote at 18. and as an adult 'child support' and collection by the CMS must become obsolete.
This isnt a matter of not wanting to help his daughter but rather not being forced to hand over money indefinitely to her mother, who has had a pretty good run for 16 years in my opinion. 
I have passed on the information to my son and suggested he contact the CSM asap as obviously their system hasnt flagged up her date of birth.
Thanks for your help
p00 xx