I believe that there will always be a charging current albeit , a very small one- perhaps microamps. The very large batteries that are use in telephone exchanges where each cell is 1m X 1m X 1m the charging current is 50mA. Perhaps if you put a light load on the battery of 1mA, it would have no effect to speak of in its support time but would allow you to sense that 1mA. If you put a diode in series with the current charging path but sample the battery voltage at the battery end of it, a Si diode should drop >.4V across it at micro amps, but if the right diode is used with a 5A forward current would only drop .9V.
Frank