Change of circumstances for Dad and Partner Pay (DAP) 007-05040030

Customers and Service Officers can update:

• the nominated tax rate prior to payment of DAP
• expected date of birth or entry into care
• details about having care of a child for DAP purposes
• details of work or paid leave during the DAP period

Only a Service Officer can update:

• the DAP period nominated start date
• DAP income test details - these can only be updated when the claim status is ASS (assessed) or PND (pending). Due to a system limitation a workaround is currently required to update DAP income within a new claim
• View work test

A change of circumstances must be notified as soon as possible.

Note: top up payments made by an employer to supplement DAP are not considered paid leave for DAP. See Payability and delivery of Dad and Partner Pay (DAP).

Customers can notify a change in their nominated start date by phone or in person. Changes to the nominated start date after the initial claim assessment may require an abridged eligibility test to confirm they will meet the eligibility requirements in the new DAP period.

The following must be considered:

• whether they did/will have care of the child for each day of the new DAP period
• whether they were/will be on unpaid leave or not working for each day of the new DAP period
• whether the relevant financial year for the income test has changed
• the nominated start date can be moved to any date in the past, up to child's date of birth without a new claim being lodged

Customers can notify a change in their nominated start date by phone or in person. Changes to the nominated start date after the initial payment has been made may require an abridged eligibility test to confirm they will meet the eligibility requirements in the new DAP period.

If a change in DAP circumstances has been notified and the change:

• would deem them ineligible, or
• reduce their DAP period

The Service Officer must discuss whether there is another period that DAP can be moved to where they would remain eligible.

This is the preferred approach because there may be instances where a customer will be disadvantaged if they could not change their DAP period start date after their payment has commenced. For example, they are required to work in their DAP period, or there is an unexpected transfer of Parental Leave Pay (PPL) that overlaps with their DAP period.

Before moving the DAP period to a new nominated start date, an abridged eligibility test needs to be completed to confirm whether the customer will meet the eligibility requirements in the new DAP period.

The Resources page contains examples of circumstances which require changing the DAP nominated start date after DAP has been paid.

For a customer to be able to update details online for DAP:

• they must have an active self-service registration, and
• their benefit status for DAP must be either assessed (ASS), pending (PND) or PAY

Online updates that do not auto-finalise will be allocated to a Service Officer and completed using Customer First.

An Interaction record/activity can generate when:

• a customer updates their circumstances online but the update is unsuccessful
• a customer accesses the online service and no updates are made but it is submitted by the customer
• a Service Officer starts a DAP Change of Circumstance and doesn't complete the change

To check for any outstanding interaction records:

• check the Customer Summary screen in Customer First
• scroll to the Activities tab/Interaction history tab to make sure all incomplete/outstanding work is completed

If a DAP circumstance (Guided Procedure) is started and not complete, the activity often updates to 'in process' to continue to action the Change of Circumstances (CoC) interaction activity.

Staff must change the activity back to 'in draft' to enable updates, and finalise the activity.

A 3 year limiting date has been introduced to ensure reassessments of older DAP claims are not occurring automatically.

The system will only apply a reassessment on DAP for an older child if the user is actively selecting the applicable child and the relevant claim (for example, when a retrospective change of circumstances needs to be coded). DAP claims will be automatically reassessed only if the child's Date of Birth or entry into care is less than 3 years from the system date.