Kristen Harmeling of Seymour said that when her twin sons turned 18, she was shocked to see that the child support payments she had received since her 2017 divorce to support her three children had been greatly reduced.

Part of the reason for her shock was the wording of her mediated divorce agreement that said she would receive child support until her youngest son – then 15 at the time – reached his 18^th birthday. She assumed that meant she would receive the full payment for all three children until that time, but instead, the payments were cut from $318 per week to $115, and in Connecticut where the age of majority is 18, she had no recourse to fix that.

“What makes the twins any less expensive in August than July?” Harmeling asked the Judiciary Committee during a March 4, 2024, public hearing. “The answer is nothing!”

The Judiciary Committee was hearing testimony on a bill to raise the age of child support in Connecticut from 18 to 21, a move that may spark passionate disagreements over when a non-custodial parent can actually stop making court-mandated payments, whether parents are required to be financially responsible for their children once they’ve hit 18 years old, and the definition of adulthood.

The legislation was bill co-sponsored by Rep. Melissa Osborne, D-Simsbury, and several other Democrats, but also had the support of Rep. Nicole Klarides-Ditra, R-Seymour, who wrote in testimony the bill “will help families who have gone through a divorce provide for post-secondary education and the associated expenses that come with college for their children.”

“It is important that noncustodial parents continue to pay child support past the age of majority while their children are in college, so this financial support which can be tremendous during the college years, does not fall only on the shoulders of one parent,” Klarides-Ditra continued.

The legislation, however, was opposed by the Division of Public Defender Services, whose representatives argued that the language was too vague and could possibly create unfair legal circumstances for noncustodial parents. Attorneys from Connecticut Legal Services argued there could be unintended consequences, particularly for poor and working-class families, and encouraged the creation of a task force to examine the matter to understand all the potential effects.

Ultimately, the bill never made it out of committee, something Rep. Osborne, an attorney and lead co-sponsor of the bill, says she expected, and that she plans to reintroduce the bill next year.

“I knew that this would be a bill that would need one, two, three or more sessions to work through and last year was a great opportunity to hear about the different perspectives,” Osborne said in an interview. “My intention is never to have some unintended consequence of a bill end up harming somebody in an unjust way.”

Osborne says that while Connecticut’s age of majority is currently 18, it hasn’t always been that way. Up until the early 1970s, the age of majority was 21, which she says shows the state has not always recognized 18 as being the age in which an individual can go out and support themselves.

“We’ve already acknowledged that we don’t want kids drinking till the age of 21, so there are lots of places in our law where we acknowledge a continuum of adulthood, a continuum of responsibility, and age-appropriate development,” Osborne said. “I think that especially in the wake of the pandemic there are a lot of kids who are absolutely not ready to be self-supporting at the age of 18. In this day and age, and in this world of housing, and when most kids need to have some sort of education past the age of 18 to become self-supporting, those factors were really brought to light more during the pandemic.”

Other states have provisions in their laws to extend child support past 18 years of age. In New York, “a child is entitled to be supported by his or her parents until the age of 21,” unless that child is married, self-supporting, in the military, or is otherwise “emancipated” by leaving the home and refusing “to obey the parents’ reasonable commands.” Massachusetts law says the court “may make appropriate orders of maintenance, support and education of any child who has attained the 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.” 

Rep. Craig Fishbein, R-Wolcott, also an attorney and ranking member on the Judiciary Committee is skeptical, however, pointing out that there’s nothing to stop two consenting divorced parents from reaching an agreement to continue with child support past 18, and that family court judges are already permitted to order that college expenses be covered, stemming from a 2001 law passed by the legislature.

“There’s the question of overlap,” Fishbein said. “You also have the question of the 18-year-old who has decided to move out of the home. They’re living elsewhere and you have a parent getting a child support order? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Fishbein says he’s supportive of expanding child support for special needs kids who may not be able to attend higher education or may require more at home care into adulthood by the custodial parent. “That’s what we should be looking at,” Fishbein said, adding that just because other states do it, doesn’t mean Connecticut should make such impactful changes. “Generally, I’ve been opposed to the blanket change for child support.”

The prospect of increasing the age of child support by another three years is likely to raise alarm bells for parents who are already paying child support, particularly after long and hard-fought divorce and custody battles that can cost massive amounts of money.

Peter Szymonik, a divorced parent who regularly beats the drum for family court reform, says he believes the legislation would be “unconstitutional,” ordering property to be stripped from one person and given to another, while treating divorced parents differently from married parents.

“Once a child turns 18, they are emancipated and a private citizen and adult,” Szymonik said in an email. “Even if the argument could be made, any payments should be directed and paid directly to the now adult child, not the other parent.”

“The state does not tell married parents what to spend on their adult children, the state has no authority to dictate what unmarried or divorced parents spend on their adult children,” Szymonik said. “The state would need to raise the age of majority for all children in our state to 21.”

Heidi, a divorced mother in Connecticut and custodial parent, who would prefer to use just her first name, says she believes extending child support until 21 is necessary given the need for higher education, the cost of living, and all that is required for a young person to start out on their own. Heidi’s daughter waited until she was 20 before she attended college, and Heidi continues to support her.

“They’re not financially independent, and kids nowadays, it takes a lot more for them to get on their feet and be independent. Plus, they need to be a lot more educated than ever before to get jobs to sustain and support themselves,” Heidi said. “I think kids need support beyond the age of 18 because of the way the world is today.”

Although Heidi says that extending child support till 21 would be good for “normal” divorces, high conflict divorce casesbecome a different story; she personally would not have forced child support for an extra three years. Instead, she was grateful to sever all ties, financial and otherwise, with her ex-husband when her daughter turned 18. 

“My concern would be the continued abuse my daughter and I would continue to take until she was 21 years old,” Heidi said. “The system is just that bad.”

Heidi, who works with other divorced mothers to support them as they go through the family court system, says that some noncustodial parents simply don’t pay. The problem of owed child support is massive, according to the Office of the Administration for Children and Families, which found that $113 billion in child support was owed to custodial parents as of 2021, and that the older the arrearage got, the less likely it was to be collected.

Osborne says she’s hopeful to continue the conversation in the next legislative session, saying that she wants to get a variety of perspectives to ensure the best bill possible. She says that children shouldn’t suffer for the decisions of their parents, and courts should consider whether the child would have been supported past the age of 18 had the family stayed intact.

She also points out that reforms to the criminal justice system have acknowledged that young adult brain development continues until age 25, which has resulted in sentence reductions for offenders who committed crimes in their late teens and early 20s.

“I think that in lots of other areas of the law we are comfortable with this idea of grades of adulthood, but our child support laws don’t seem to have reflected that,” Osborne said. “When a child reaches the age of 18 and they’re not ready to go become self-sufficient and set up their own household, which most kids aren’t, it’s the primary custodial parent who is really left with that financial burden of young adulthood.”

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