When children cease to be children of the marriage, does the court have jurisdiction to vary child support?

The first two principles favour giving a court the jurisdiction to vary the order, particularly in the case of increased support. I can see no reason why the court should be deprived of jurisdiction to consider the request of a recipient parent who struggled to support the children and to shift part of that burden to the payor parent if there was a change in circumstance that would have justified a variation while the children were still children of the marriage. The court faced with a variation application would, of course, have to be mindful of the principle that child support is the right of the child, not the parent and that once the children are no longer children of the marriage, they will not directly benefit from increased support. However, a regime that gave payor parents immunity after the children ceased to be children of the marriage would create a perverse incentive. If the payor parent is to be absolved from responsibility once the children cease to be “children of the marriage”, the payor whose income increases might be encouraged not to respond to his or her increased obligations in the hope that the reciprocal spouse will delay making an application for a variation increasing support until the children lose their status to avoid opening the door to an increased obligation: see Simone v. Herres, at para. 27.