Non-cash maintenance income assessment for Family Tax Benefit (FTB) 277-51100000

For information about the definition of child support or spousal maintenance, see Is it child support/ maintenance income.

Is the non-cash child support part of a child support agreement accepted by Child Support?

• Yes, go to Step 2
• No, go to Step 3

Child support agreements with a start date of 1 July 2008 or later are no longer manually assessed or coded by Centrelink staff.

For agreements with a start date before 1 July 2008 accepted by Child Support, any non-cash maintenance must be manually recorded on the Centrelink system for the period up to and including 30 June 2008. Child Support entitlement and disbursement details for that period will only include cash child support.

For agreements in place before 1 July 2008 but not accepted by Child Support from 1 July 2008, non-cash maintenance is still assessed by Centrelink.

If non-cash maintenance is recorded and the customer enters into a child support agreement, a manual review activity is created so that it can be determined whether the manually recorded non-cash maintenance should be zeroed.

If non-cash maintenance details need to be recorded or updated in relation to an agreement:

See Child support agreements in Maintenance Income Test (MIT) for Family Tax Benefit (FTB).

Procedure ends here.

• Yes, refer the customer to Child Support. For contact details, see Child Support if they have received child support and/or spousal maintenance directly from the paying parent. Procedure ends here
• No, go to Step 4

Centrelink deems private collect customers as receiving their full child support entitlement. Manual assessment and coding is only required if the customer advises they:

• have a partial exemption in place and they are collecting a lesser amount or more than the amount they previously advised they were actually collecting
• receive more than their full ongoing entitlement, and the additional amount received relates to arrears owed for a private collect period prior to 1 July 2012, or
• have transferred from Child Support to private collect and has asked Child Support not to collect arrears owed from the Child Support collect period

Is it a one-off lump sum or transfer of an asset (perhaps as a property settlement)?

• Yes, it is assessed and recorded as capitalised maintenance income. Procedure ends here
• No, go to Step 6

To assess the value of a non-cash benefit, see:

• Maintenance income: accommodation expenses
• Maintenance income: motor vehicle expenses
• Maintenance income: health expenses
• Maintenance income: loan repayments
• Maintenance income: trusts

Record privately collected non-cash maintenance income as actual maintenance. See Recording private maintenance income.