To claim your child as your dependent, your child must meet either the qualifying child test or the qualifying relative test: To meet the qualifying child test, your child must be younger than you and either younger than 19 years old or be a "student" younger than 24 years old as of the end of the calendar year.

How do dependent claims work?

Dependent Claims

37 CFR 1.75(c) explains that One or more claims may be presented in dependent form, referring back to and further limiting another claim or claims in the same application. Claims that refer back to and further limit another claim are called dependent claims.

What is the point of a dependent claim?

Capture “minor inventions”: Dependent claims allow an applicant “to capture improvements to the invention that are not important enough to justify a separate application, but that one would want to avoid having a competitor step in and patent something similar.”