Maintenance income: health expenses 277-51100030

Some examples of health expenses that can be treated as child support are health insurance premiums, the cost of prescriptions and medical equipment, the cost of medical treatment, ambulance transport, and treatment by health professionals, etc.

For health insurance premiums:

• only the amount paid to insure the payee and child/ren is assessed
• the 30% government rebate available on private health insurance premiums must be taken off the full cost. (Premiums are generally quoted with the rebate already taken off)

For medical expenses, any amount the payer could claim back from Medicare or from private health insurance is not assessed.

Some maintenance income is not assessable as it is exempt maintenance income.

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

For agreements with a start date before 1 July 2008, any non-cash maintenance must be manually recorded on the Centrelink system for the period up to and including 30 June 2008. For agreements that were in place before 1 July 2008 that have been accepted by Child Support and transitioned under the Child Support Scheme Reforms from 1 July 2008, non-cash maintenance previously coded on the Centrelink system is maintained by Centrelink.