NY when child moves out

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We have a similar situation. We are also in NY. My stepson is 19 years old and left his mothers home 2 years ago. We continued to pay support and hope that the mom gave some support to my husbands son, we don't know that for sure, but we hope that happened. We went to visit our lawyer in August after our son graduated from high school. We were under the impression that once he graduated and was not continuing on in school and living on his own, that support would stop. Our lawyer told us support in NY is paid until the child is 21 years, which is ridiculous, but I won't go into that. He also told us that we can't emancipate him, he has to emancipate himself. He instructed us to get the payee changed and have the support we are paying go directly to my husband's son. We have opted not to do this, we don't want to drag everyone back into court and incur all these legal fees when in actuality the support will end 19 months from now when he does turn 21. It just doesn't seem worth it, so we are leaving things alone and continuing to pay the mother the support. If she chooses to give it to our son, fine, if she chooses to use it on herself, that is also fine, we have done our obligation, and it gets garnished right out of my husbands check and sent directly to her by social services. Alls I can say is the end is in sight, and I am going to throw the biggest damn party when we make that final payment.

Ha - I hear you there! We're going to feel like we won the lottery when the CS payments cease!
We live in NY too. I think it is based a lot on what the judge declares - I mean if the kid moves out and works full time - why should the father keep paying the mom CS? I agree, hopefully she is either giving it to her child, or setting it aside and making a lump sum gift in the future. That would be ideal.

I remember, my ex husbands mom charged him room and board, and when he moved out, she gave him that money towards furniture - so it was like a savings account he had no clue! It was really great for him - talk about a nice surprise!
That is what I am getting at with the CS comment above.