about long Idle peroids (as in Unable to pay sub fees)

IRL just hit me like a crap of bricks and i haveto move, and theres going to be quite a few months i will be w/o net much less able to pay my sub fees.

at first w/ XI after a few months your chars were deleted. then they let the accounts stay untill a user would delete em.

with XIV:ARR, will our characters be deleted after so long w/o having paid the sub fee? or will they stay there like XI now till i pay for the month's fee and then be able to login?

No, that won't happen. Your character will not be deleted.

You could be gone 5 years, and assuming the game is still running, your character will still exist.

FFXI did away with that rule like 1 year after release in the states.

Deleting inactive accounts/characters is a thing of the past. Even XI stopped doing it a long time ago.