Disbursement Method 277-51080060

The Disbursement Method is used to estimate maintenance income collected via Child Support where:

• the customer has asked Centrelink to use the Disbursement Method, or
• the Modified Entitlement Method comparison results in a higher annual maintenance income estimate using the Disbursement Method

See Child Support collection customer wants to change assessment method: effect on Family Tax Benefit (FTB) for details of how to update the assessment method.

Child Support advises details of payments to the customer (disbursements) via disbursement loads to the FAO system.

Disbursement details can be viewed from the Mtce-Child Support Disbursed Payments: All-Grps Summary (MNAP) screen.

When a disbursement load is received from Child Support, the customer's annual maintenance income is calculated as the sum of:

• all Child Support disbursements received so far in the financial year during Child Support collection and private collection periods, including direct payments, often referred to as a non-agency payment (NAP) and arrears payments
• the lower of:
• current month or the previous month disbursements (whichever is the higher amount, including normal, emergency and NAP) x number of months left in financial year
  or
• one twelfth of current entitlement amount x number of months left in financial year
• for any private collection periods, the apportioned entitlement/actual private child support amounts
• non cash maintenance
• capitalised maintenance income

Maintenance income is annualised: total received in relevant period x 365/number of days in the customer's relevant period.

Details of maintenance income assessment can be viewed from the MIT Explanation Summary (MNEX) screen.

See the Resources page for examples.

Date of effect for ongoing FTB Part A instalments is no earlier than the date paid to plus one day (DPT + 1) at the time of the Child Support disbursement load.

If maintenance income decreases, the change is not applied until DPT + 1 after the final Child Support load for the month.

If FTB is granted for a past period in the current financial year, the current annual maintenance income assessment will be used to work out FTB Part A rate for that period.

For details of how maintenance income is calculated during FTB reconciliation, see Maintenance reconciliation.