Early September is when families feel the cost of a move most sharply. School starts, timetables arrive, and a child either walks into a new classroom with the right papers or does not. For parents who are thinking about a life abroad, the start of a school year is also the moment to ask the question that most relocation plans leave until too late: what do the rules say about the children?
Adults tend to plan a move around their own permit, their own tax position and their own work. Children are added at the end, as dependants on a form. But children are covered by rules of their own, and those rules often decide whether a move works at all. Three sets matter most: the residence rules that decide whether a child may live in the country, the school rules and costs that decide where they will learn, and the citizenship rules that decide which passports they end up holding and whether they can pass them on.
Residence: The Age Limits Nobody Reads
Most residence permits treat a child as a dependant of a parent. The child's right to be in the country is borrowed from the parent's, and it comes with an age limit.
The United Kingdom's Skilled Worker route is a clear example. According to the government's guidance, a worker can bring a child under 18. A child over 18 can only apply as a dependant if they already have permission to be in the UK as the worker's dependant, must not be married or in a civil partnership, and must live with the parent unless in full-time education elsewhere. Unless an exemption applies, the family must also show savings of £315 for the first child and £200 for each additional child, held for 28 consecutive days.
The United States uses a different line. The E-2 treaty investor visa, according to USCIS, allows investors and employees to be accompanied by spouses and unmarried children under 21. The children's nationality need not match the investor's, and dependants generally receive the same period of stay as the principal.
Spain's non-lucrative residence visa builds children into the money test. The consulate's guidance requires 400% of the IPREM income indicator for the applicant plus 100% for each family member in their care. Every child raises the income bar.
Two lessons follow. First, the age cliff is real. A 17-year-old moving to the UK as a dependant and a 20-year-old moving to the US on an E-2 are both close to the edge of their category, and the permit may outlast their eligibility. Second, a child's status is only as secure as the parent's. If the principal permit ends, is refused on renewal or is not converted into permanent residence, the child's status goes with it. Before you move, map every child's age against every year of the permit, including the years it takes to reach permanent residence.
School: Timing, Type and Cost
The school question has three parts, and none of them is simply about which school is best.
Timing. The easiest ages to move are generally the ones furthest from a national exam. A child who moves in the middle of a two-year qualification course may have to restart it, switch to a different system or finish it remotely. Plan the move around the exam calendar of both the country you leave and the country you join, not around the date the lease ends.
Type. Families usually face three options: the local public system in the local language, a private or international school, or home education where the law allows it. Each option has consequences beyond the classroom. Local schooling usually integrates a child fastest and costs least, but requires the language. International schools keep a child on a familiar curriculum, but can leave a family living in an expatriate bubble. Home education is legal in some countries and heavily restricted in others. What works in one place may be unlawful in the next, and the rules deserve a check before the move, not after the first letter from the authorities. For families considering Malta, the options, including the role of Church schools, are set out in Malta's Education System.
Some residence routes deal with school directly. The Barbados Welcome Stamp, a 12-month remote work permit, lets school-age children come with the family without a separate student visa. They may attend private schools, public schools where places are available, or be homeschooled, and education on the island is compulsory from 5 to 16. It is rare for a scheme to spell it out that clearly.
Cost. Private school fees are a policy variable, not a fixed price. In the United Kingdom, the government confirmed that from 1 January 2025 all education and boarding services provided by private schools for a charge became subject to VAT at the standard rate of 20%, including fees paid from 29 July 2024 for terms starting in January 2025. The political fallout was examined in Feckless and Reckless. For families comparing private education at home with schooling abroad, that single change moved the numbers overnight, and a similar change could happen in any country.
Citizenship: What Your Children Inherit, and What They Can Pass On
The citizenship rules are the ones with the longest reach, because they affect not only your children but your grandchildren.
American parents. A child born abroad to one US citizen parent and one non-citizen parent is a US citizen at birth only if the citizen parent meets a residence condition. Under 8 U.S.C. 1401(g), that parent must have been physically present in the United States for periods totalling at least five years before the birth, at least two of them after turning fourteen. A US citizen who left the country young and has a child abroad may not be able to transmit citizenship at all.
British parents. Under section 2 of the British Nationality Act 1981, a child born outside the UK is a British citizen if a parent is a British citizen otherwise than by descent, with narrow exceptions for parents serving abroad in Crown or certain European service. A child born abroad to a parent who is British otherwise than by descent, which typically means a parent who became British through birth in the UK, is British. That child, however, is British by descent, and their own children born abroad will not automatically be British. British citizenship passes down one generation abroad, not two.
The consequence is easy to miss. A family that moves abroad before the children are born, and whose children later settle abroad too, may end up with grandchildren who have no automatic claim to the passport the grandparents took for granted. That is not a reason not to move. It is a reason to know the rules early and to check, before each birth abroad, what each parent's country offers.
The same logic applies in reverse to the destination country. Some countries grant citizenship to children born on their soil, many do not, and naturalisation for children follows its own timelines. How a family can end up with two passports for everyone, deliberately rather than by accident, was the subject of The Two-Passport Family. A story of how citizenship and belonging played out for one family in Ireland is told in Moving to Ireland.
Custody and Consent: The Rule That Can Stop a Move
One more set of rules applies to many families and is rarely mentioned in relocation brochures. Where parents are separated, divorced or simply not in agreement, moving a child to another country without the consent of the other parent, or a court order, can amount to wrongful removal.
The first object of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is "to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained in any Contracting State". Under its Article 3, a removal is wrongful where it breaches rights of custody held under the law of the state where the child was habitually resident immediately before the move, and those rights were actually being exercised. Article 4 applies the Convention to children up to the age of 16. According to the Hague Conference's status table, it has 103 contracting parties. In practice, that means a relocation made without the other parent's agreement can be reversed by a court in the destination country.
If both parents hold parental responsibility, get written consent or a court order before the move and keep it with the children's documents. Remember that the question of whether a removal was wrongful is answered under the law of the country the child is leaving, not the one they are moving to.
A Checklist for the Family Version of the Plan
Put together, the rules suggest a sequence that is different from the usual one.
- Start with each child's age. Check every dependant age limit in the permit you plan to use, and in the permanent residence route that follows it.
- Check the child's status year by year. Make sure a child who turns 18 or 21 during the permit still has a route to stay, whether as a student, through their own permit or through permanent residence.
- Choose the school before the house. The school decides the neighbourhood, not the other way round, and admission may need documents that take weeks to obtain.
- Time the move around exams. Avoid moving a child in the middle of a qualification course unless the new school can continue it.
- Know what your passport passes on. Read the citizenship-by-descent rule of each parent's country before the children are born abroad, and register births with the right consulate promptly.
- Settle consent in writing. Where two parents share responsibility, record the agreement or obtain a court order before anyone boards a plane.
The school gets the attention, but the residence and citizenship rules decide the move. A family that gets those right can fix a school choice in a year. A family that gets them wrong can find a teenager without status or a grandchild without a passport, and those are far harder to repair.
Work with Sebastian
If you want a family plan that maps each child's age, school and passport against the permit you are considering, book a consultation.
