Is 12 Old Enough to Be Alone? Child Support in Michigan

As Family Law attorneys, we encounter a lot of interesting…and some sheerly desperate…ideas about how a recently-divorced single parent can get by. Often, these come up when the other parent files a custody-change motion or a support-change motion in response to one of these more desperate ideas. For example: what happens when a single mother wants to save child support costs by having a kid take care of themselves?

When Your Child Can Provide Their Own Care
In the state of Michigan, the standard child support arrangements dictate that the supporting parent pay half of all child care costs until the child in question reaches 12 years of age. That’s the only legal indicator we currently have in Michigan regarding when a child is old enough to be left at home alone. (The Michigan Child Protection Law (Appendix 2) offers 11 years of age as a guideline for the minimum age a child should be alone, but the child-care costs is an actual legal effect of getting older, offering a stronger case for when child care should be considered no longer necessary.)

Other state’s laws use:

• 14 (Illinois)
• 8 (Maryland)
• 10 (New Mexico)
• 8 (North Carolina)
• 10 (Oregon)

And other state’s guidelines run more-or-less the same range, averaging around 11. According to child development experts, children under 8 shouldn’t ever be left unattended to fend for themselves. Below 12, they shouldn’t be left unattended for more than a few hours, and then only when those few hours have a known and fairly inflexible routine they need to follow. At 15, they need at least a few check-ins each day, but can largely be left alone.

So why is this important? Because child care costs are expensive — about half of the median income for a single parent for an infant, or a quarter of the same for a child that spends all day in school. Needless to say, the moment that a child is mature enough to handle themselves on their own, almost any parent — single or otherwise — would be held blameless for setting up their kids to handle their own business, at least between the end of school and when they got home from work.

The Catch
Importantly for us as Family Law attorneys, however, there’s always a catch. Even though the law prevents you from demanding your ex pay for child care once your kid turns 12, there’s nothing that keeps them from insisting that you’re doing something wrong by keeping the child at home. So having a latchkey kid can, in fact, be grounds for a motion to modify child support payments or even custody arrangements.

The worst thing you can do, however, is start your kid taking care of themselves while you still take money from your ex for child care. That’s not just failing to take proper care of your child, it’s outright lying to your ex (and the state of Michigan). The proper thing to do? Communicate: ask your spouse if they think the kid is ready to look after themselves (or even better, “what can we do to get our kid ready to look after themselves?”), and get them to agree that saving the child care money would be worth the effort to teach the kid some independent-living skills.