Custody Situations for Advance Child Tax Credit Payments
Parents who share custody of their children should be aware of how advance child tax credit (CTC) payments are distributed. This information could help you avoid a possible tax bill when filing next year.
To help taxpayers understand how certain actions and choices affect eligibility for advance payments and how they may affect your 2021 tax return CTC claims, IRS released COVID Tax Tip 2021-147, Here’s how a taxpayer’s custody situation may affect their advance child tax credit payments, on October 5, 2021. IRS.gov has additional information about custody situations under Topic M: Commonly Asked Shared-Custody Questions.
We recommend every taxpayer who has qualifying children, is receiving advance payments, and has a shared custody agreement read this information as soon as possible. The deadlines to make changes to advance CTC payments are listed below under “Requesting changes”.
The IRS began issuing advance CTC payments to qualifying households in July. More information about CTC and advance payments can also be found on our 2021 Child Tax Credit & Advance Payment Option Get Help page.
Requesting changes
You can use the Child Tax Credit Update Portal (titled Manage Payments on the main IRS.gov page) to:
- Check if you’re enrolled for advance payments
- Unenroll from advance payments*
- Update your bank account and mailing address
- View your payments
*Alert: To stop advance payments, you must unenroll three days before the first Thursday of the month by 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. It may take up to seven calendar days to process your unenrollment. Check back after unenrolling to make sure your request was processed successfully.
See the chart below for the remaining payment dates and change request deadlines.
| Payment Month | Unenrollment Deadline | Payment Date |
| November | 11/1/2021 | 11/15/2021 |
| December | 11/29/2021 | 12/15/2021 |