Maintenance Action Test (MAT) for customers with shared care 277-51070080

A customer required to obtain child support for a shared care child will only be entitled to a percentage of the base rate of FTB Part A if reasonable action has not been taken to obtain child support.

Child support, also known as maintenance, refers to financial and material support for children from their separated non-custodial parent(s). The terms maintenance and child support are often used interchangeably and generally have the same meaning. Maintenance is a term used by Centrelink and includes child support as well as support for a partner from a previous relationship (spousal maintenance).

Generally, a customer is considered to be taking maintenance action and will meet the MAT if:

• an application is made for a child support assessment for a child
• a customer has a child support assessment for a child
• an application is made for a child support agreement to be accepted for a child
• a customer has a child support agreement accepted for a child, or
• a customer has an exemption from taking maintenance action

Customers with less than 35% actual care of a child are not required to apply for a child support assessment for the purposes of the Maintenance Action Test, although they are eligible to apply for a child support assessment.

If the level of care increases to 35% or more, the customer will need to take reasonable action to obtain child support within 13 weeks (91 days) of the date of the change in the care arrangements to satisfy the Maintenance Action Test. The customer should apply for a child support assessment if they have not done so, or inform that there is a child support case in place if they have been the payer in an existing case. (See 'only one child support case' below.)

Where a customer is a payer in a child support agreement and their level of care increases to more than 65% and they are receiving FTB for the child/ren, they must take reasonable steps to change from being the payer to the payee otherwise they may be deemed to fail the Maintenance Action Test (MAT).

For MAT implications where there has been a care change in a Child Support agreement and a child support care suspension period has been applied, see Process page.

For MAT implications where there has been a care change in a child support agreement resulting in a child support care terminating event see Process page

Maintenance Action Test (MAT) for Family Tax Benefit (FTB) customers provides further details on the reasonable maintenance action requirements for these cases.

From 1 July 2008, if parents share the care of a child or if each has one or more children in care, Child Support registers one child support case, which assesses the entitlements of all parties and determines an overall payee and payer.

The system will only establish an electronic link with one Centrelink customer (the child support payee) at the time the link is established. This means that information received electronically from Child Support to show that the other party (generally the payer) is not recognised and the system will not show that the payer has met the MAT.

If both parents are FTB customers, manual coding may be required on the other parent's record to reflect the MAT status and prevent the payer's FTB Part A rate being restricted to base rate.

Parents who share the care of a child equally or who each care for a child from the same relationship must still apply for child support if eligible. This is because the parent with the greater income may need to pay child support to the other parent. A shared care arrangement can affect child support liability.

If a customer cares for a child 14-34% of the time, they are not entitled to FTB. However, they are considered to be meeting 24% of the costs of the child and this is taken into account when calculating the customer's child support liability and may result in a reduction of the amount of child support they will have to pay.

Income support customers whose income qualifies them to pay the minimum child support liability will not be required to pay any child support if they have a child in care for 14% or more of the time.

From 1 July 2009, customers with children from a previous same-sex relationship may be required to take reasonable action to obtain child support from the child's other parent.

There may be customers who have children from a previous same-sex relationship and have a current maintenance exemption code IVF. This will need to be reviewed in the event that the other parent of the child is liable to pay child support under the changes to recognition of parentage. The review could also result in the customer retaining the IVF exemption or the regrouping of the relevant children into a 'child of current relationship' status depending on the customer's circumstances.

If a customer has shared care of a child, their taxable income for FTB and Child Care Subsidy (CCS) can still be reduced by 100% of any child support paid for the child.

If the customer or their current partner receives any maintenance income for the child, this is still assessed under the Maintenance Income Test.

Customers with less than 30% care of a child were not eligible to apply for a child support assessment. If the level of care increased to 30% or more, the customer needed to take reasonable action to obtain child support within 13 weeks (91 days) of the date of the change in the care arrangements to satisfy the MAT.