Square Enix Account Management Question

Forgive me if the following question has been asked somewheres before, but I could not find a straight answer.

With the old system your characters would be removed from the server after 3 months of not paying (IIRC). Do the same rules apply with the Square Enix Account Management System? I ask because I am currently taking an extended hiatus from XI. I don't want to pay for the game while I'm not playing it, but I also don't want to lose 7+ years of work on my character because of this break.

I did see a dev response a while back that was along the lines of "If you forget to pay it for a month, just pay it the next month", but no clear answer on how long you can put off paying without consequence.

Any help on the issue would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time.

They stopped deleting characters a few years back. I have known individuals that stopped playing back in 2005 recover their characters in 2011. Most people who I've seen lose their characters have been because they lost all of their log in information, including codes.

Even in the case of a Lost ID, if you have your original codes and a few other key pieces of information (name address registered at the time etc) you can call customer support and have the account recovered.