How do I change iTunes country with family sharing and child accounts?

Question

I've moved from the US to the UK and I'm trying to change my country in the App store on my iPad. I have family sharing setup, and a child account included in the family sharing.

The problem is that changing countries demands that I disable family sharing first. But when I try to do this, I can't, because I have a child under 13 on my family sharing account which cannot be removed from the family. The child account can be transferred to another family - but I don't have another family!

So it looks like I have to delete my childs account, then disable family sharing, then recreate it all in the UK. Hence losing anything bought by my child and causing a lot of disruption.

Is that really the only way to do it or is there any better method out there?

Answer 1

original poster here - I did basically what Mitchell D suggested and it worked. I actually moved my wife's account to UK first, set up family sharing with her, invited my child to join my wife's new family, then disabled my family sharing and moved myself to the UK, then invited child back to my family. Phew!

So far, all seems to have gone OK but was a bit of hassle and entirely non-obvious!

Answer 2

I had a Family Sharing with a UK Apple ID as Organizer ("UK ID"), one adult member ("Adult"), and one child member ("Child"). The problem was that the payment was linked to a fourth, US-based Apple ID ("US ID"), not allowing any of us to do anything.

These are the steps I took:

1. In the UK ID iCloud account, I removed the Adult from Family Sharing
2. The Adult then set up a new Family Sharing in her iCloud account
3. Adult invited the Child to join the new Family Sharing under her iCloud account
4. UK ID accepted, so that the Child moved to the new Family Sharing under the Adult's iCloud (the UK ID Family Sharing now had zero members)
5. UK ID Stopped Family Sharing in UK ID's iCloud (UK ID now does not have Familiy Sharing enabled in his iCloud)
6. UK ID immediate set up a new Family Sharing in UK ID's iCloud, using a UK payment card
7. UK ID invited the Child again
8. Adult accepted, so that Child moved to UK ID's Family Sharing
9. Adult stopped Family Sharing on her iCloud
10. UK ID invited Adult to join UK ID's Familiy Sharing

There then was another issue:

Apparently, if only ONE member of Family Sharing has a Country other than the Organiser, NONE can join Apple Music! My Child also had a US account, so neither Adult nor Child could join Apple Music under the Family Share. The only way to fix this is to go into Child's iPod/iPhone, go to her account in Apple Music, iCloud, and iTunes Store and in one of those, you will be able to change the Country to UK. ALL member accounts, and the Payment Method account have to be set to the same Country.

Answer 3

You could create a temporary 'second family' account and transfer the child to that. Then change country to UK and transfer the child account back.

Little bit of messing around but you wouldn't loose any data