Family Tax Benefit (FTB) customers with court order or a court registered agreement 277-51070050

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This document explains the requirements for a FTB customer to satisfy the Maintenance Action Test (MAT) when they have:

a court order, or
court registered agreement for child support

Consent orders and maintenance action

There are specific requirements for a customer with a consent order to take reasonable action to obtain child support.

Court orders when paying parent is overseas

If the paying parent is overseas, the customer may:

have sought a court order to allow collection by Child Support, or
already be privately collecting an overseas court ordered amount of child support

Registering court orders/court registered agreements

If the customer gets a court order or court registered agreement they may register the document with Child Support. The customer may choose to:

privately collect their court order/registered agreement amount, or
ask Child Support to collect it on their behalf

Private collection and MAT

Before to 1 July 2012, if the customer privately collected their child support, Centrelink assumed the customer received the full amount of the notional assessment (NA) that related to the court order or court registered agreement.

If the customer advised they could not collect their full agreement amount privately, they would have failed the MAT for the child unless they requested Child Support collection or they applied for an exemption from seeking child support.

From 1 July 2012, if the customer elects to privately collect their child support, they will be deemed to receive the full NA amount as advised by Child Support. If the customer advises they are not receiving the full value of their agreement, they will not fail the MAT.

Note: the value of the agreement is not received from Child Support for private collect customers, only the notional assessed amount is received. The NA is used in the MAT for these customers. The customer may still request Child Support collect on their behalf where they cannot collect the full value of the agreement.

Ending a court order or court registered agreement

To end a court order/court registered agreement before it is due to end, a person must apply to the Family Court.

If the receiving parent is no longer the main carer of the children stated in the court order/agreement, Child Support can stop collection of child support payments. Only one of the parties needs to apply to restart collection.

Normally, a court order or agreement ends when:

the paying parent dies
the child turns 18 years of age
the child becomes a member of a couple
the child is adopted

However, the court order may state that child support is to continue after any of these events.