Missouri's requirements for child support after high school graduation

We are now at the time of the year when recent high school grads start enrolling in their post-secondary classes. Here in Missouri, if a parent has been paying child support for that grad, now is the time to start looking at the state requirements to continue getting assistance.

High school grads who are planning on continuing their education are eligible to have child support continued - and get help with tuition expenses - under certain conditions. The first is that the student will be pursuing higher education. That can mean trade school, beauty school, massage therapy school - or it can mean college.

The student must be enrolled as a full time student (Missouri says that means 12 hours as a general rule). Or, if the student is working at least 20 hours a week, he or she can be enrolled in as few as 9 credit hours.

The student must give BOTH parents official notification of his or her classes. This is one of the requirements that gets a lot of push back. I frequently hear students complain about having to send an official notice of enrollment to the parent who's been paying child support. The statutes are quite clear, though - and so is the case law. Without the notification to both parents the student runs a significant risk of being ineligible to continue to receive child support. Occasionally, I have seen a court that will allow a student to ignore this requirement, but that is the exception to the rule.

The absolute deadline for getting enrolled and getting all the information to both parents is October 1st. If you wait past the date of enrollment, it's really easy to forget to get the official enrollment notifications to both parents. Much easier to do it all at the same time.