A dependent child is generally under 22 and not married or in a common-law relationship. Their age is frozen on the day IRCC receives your complete application, so what matters is when you file, not when a decision comes. Get this wrong and it usually cannot be fixed later.
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Under 22, and not a spouse or common-law partner. That is the core test, and both halves matter. A 20-year-old who marries during processing stops being your dependant, no matter how young they are.
There is an over-22 category. A child of 22 or older can still qualify if they have depended on their parents for financial support since before turning 22 and cannot support themselves because of a mental or physical condition. It is evidence-heavy: medical reports, proof of continuous financial dependence, and usually a specialist's opinion.
Adopted children, stepchildren and children in your legal custody each have their own rules. So does a child who has dependent children of their own, which is the one situation where a sponsor of a dependent child also has to meet an income requirement.
IRCC locks in your child's age on the date it receives a complete application. If your child is 21 when the application lands, they stay eligible even if processing runs past their 22nd birthday. If they are 22 when it lands, no amount of processing speed helps.
'Complete' is doing real work in that sentence. An application returned for a missing form or an unpaid fee never locked anything in, and the clock restarts when you resubmit. When a birthday is close, completeness matters more than presentation.
The marital condition is not locked in. Your child must remain unmarried and not in a common-law relationship right through to the day they land as a permanent resident.
If you are applying for permanent residence yourself, include the child now as an accompanying or non-accompanying dependant. Both are declared and examined. The only difference is whether they travel with you.
If you are already a permanent resident or citizen, you sponsor the child as a member of the family class. There is no minimum income requirement for sponsoring your own dependent child, unless that child has dependent children of their own. You sign an undertaking to support them, and its length depends on the child's age.
Where the other parent is not coming, you generally need their written consent for the child to leave the country, or a court order giving you that authority. Officers ask for this routinely, and applications sit unprocessed until it arrives.
This is the most damaging trap in family immigration. If you did not declare a child and have them examined when you became a permanent resident, you generally cannot sponsor that child later. It applies even where the omission was innocent: a child you did not know about, or one an agent left off a form.
Narrow public policy exceptions and humanitarian and compassionate applications exist, but they are discretionary and hard. Prevention is the only reliable answer. Declare every child, including children who are not coming with you, children from an earlier relationship, and children you support but do not live with.
If you think this has already happened to you, get advice before you file anything at all. A refusal on this basis creates a record, and how the first application is framed matters more than most people realise.
Not if a complete application reaches IRCC first. Age is locked in on the date IRCC receives your complete application, not the date of the decision. The real risk is filing something incomplete: it is returned, nothing was locked in, and the birthday passes in the meantime. Speed and completeness both matter here.
Only if they have depended on their parents financially since before turning 22 and cannot support themselves because of a mental or physical condition. Both parts have to be proved with documents. Being a student, unemployed, or still living at home does not qualify a child on its own.
Generally no. Sponsoring your own dependent child does not carry a minimum income requirement, unlike sponsoring a parent or grandparent. The exception is where the child being sponsored has dependent children of their own, in which case an income test applies to you as sponsor.
Usually not. A family member who was not declared and examined when you became a permanent resident generally cannot be sponsored afterwards. There are limited discretionary avenues, but they are difficult, and how the case is presented matters enormously. Do not file this one yourself.
You will generally need a court order granting you authority to remove the child, or clear evidence explaining why consent cannot be obtained. Applications routinely stall here. Deal with the family law side first, because in practice it sets the immigration timeline.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.