Hi there, looking for some advice regarding Centrelink payments after marrying. We very recently got married and I’m about to update my change in circumstance to Centrelink and I am getting very worried about how I’m going to survive.. I have been a single mother for many years and was on PPS and FTB A & B. My husband works away on the mines so his income on paper is quite high but he pays an unbelievable amount in tax and over $30,000 in child support. Child support will not reduce his amount although we have married and I have a 6 year old child that he will now have to help pay for and raise. I am starting my own business so my income is quite limited atm so I had been receiving income support through Centrelink. My question is, if child support doesn’t accept myself and my child as my husband responsibility does this mean Centrelink won’t take my husbands income into consideration? While he’s paying so much in child support he has nothing left to help me with..I’m beginning to get stressed at the thought of how I’m going to survive if they not only stop the parenting payment but also the ftb payments.. Any guidance be much appreciated. Thank you in advance
25 Replies
He is bullshitting you if he is saying he has nothing left. You guys are married he needs to support you too as you will now lose it all. CSA does not take partner's income or children into consideration but Centrelink does. You will need to find work until your business is up and running if you can't afford to live off his income alone.
I’m very surprised that you have gotten married before you started living with each other (or if you were then why you never changed from PPS to PPP sooner).
As stated by yourself No CSA won’t take into consideration you and your child, however Centrelink most definitely will take into consideration his income. You’ll have to provide a yearly estimate for his income, you may choose to report his income as well if it changes per fortnight, however after 6 fortnight’s of no Parenting Payment Partnered received you’ll no longer have to report. You’ll only get any FTB A or B that you’re entitled too.
You’re in for some adjustments financially and may need to look at where you can cut costs (both of you) to make it manageable. There is a form on the Centrelink site that you can use which will provide you with an estimated amount you’ll get based on what your husband pays in child support and his income etc. Check it out so you’re feeling more comfortable with what you may or may not get. But please remember it’s an ESTIMATED amount. You’ll know for sure what you’ll get when you change your payments. Good luck with your business and married life 😁
You will definitely loose PPS and if he is paying $30k in child support than he is earning good money which will effect your FTB. Sadly, if you can’t survive on his income you will have to return to work.
Wasn’t this something you looked at before you moved in together and got married??
I find it hard to believe you haven’t lived together before you got married, in this day and age.
Of course you are going to loose PP. he earns a sh*t load of money and if he isn’t prepared to adjust his income to support you and your child then you married a gigantic DUD.
CS do accept you and your child as his responsibility but that doesn’t effect his CS. Why should his 1st child suffer and loose financial stability because his daddy decided to get married?
I am genuinely worried about you, because I think you’ve gotten yourself into a situation without really being a team with your partner.
He earns 100+ k in gross income, pays 30k in child support and about 30k in Tax he still has 40k a year to his name. You’re married? How long have you been living in the same house? Have you been frauding the system for a while?. If you’re now living together and you previously weren’t then yes your payments are going to get cut. But I don’t understand how you just got married and you hadn’t updated your details or spoken to your husband about his financial obligations to you as his family and how much you would loose in centre link before you took the marriage step. If he’s not willing to support you and your child why the hell did you marry him? You’ll need to get yourself a job and work on your business in your down time if you want it to kick off and still survive without your husbands support at all. (I’d never have married a man who wasn’t willing to support me and my child with what ever money he earns and put myself into the I don’t know how I’m going to survive situation) you should never have been receiving PPS only PPP and Fam Tax a and b especially whilst you were engaged. I’d be more worried about how your planning on paying back centre link what you owe them. Since the day I moved in with my Partner with my 3 kids I’ve only received Fam Tax a and b and he’s supplemented what I lost with his income. It was the only way it would have worked. Especially seeing as he wouldn’t want to eat baked beans on toast for the rest of his life.
Hopefully your ex isn’t a giant douche and pays you child support too, if not you don’t even have that to fall back on. Let’s hope he has as good a job as your husband on the mines and gets slugged with a 30k a year CS payment too.
$40000 a year is sweet fuck all for a family to actually live off. It’s ridiculous they he is expected to give almost half his living wage to his ex, she would have her own income there for making a lot more money than he does
He would be on a lot more than 100k. My ex earns 130k and pays 1300 a month for 2 teenagers who i have 100% care of. 30k equals about 2500 a month which is the maximum amount for 3 kids or more.
If you budget really well and live within your means and don’t buy flashy cars or clothes etc you can live comfortably off of 40k you can do it with less. You don’t have the newest or nicest things but you can live off of it. How do I know?? Becasue I used to live off of 36k a year and it was less before then. As I said not new and not flashy, but I definitely appreciated what I had a lot more than my friends who had a lot more money than I ever did.
And this right here is why it’s not in a persons best interest (financially) to re partner when they have depends and need help from Centrelink.
I repartnered with dependants. I have no issues and he supports us without complaining about it or telling me he’s broke. So ...... not everyone is going to be in her position unless the dudes a dick!!
Does your partner have to pay out a ridiculous amount of child support a week as well as support your and your kids?
Fortunately for me no, but I’ve also lived off of 36k a year and survived whilst paying rent and car payments and receiving very minimal in Child Support for 3 kids by myself. If my partner had kids and had to pay child support I still wouldn’t be frauding the system and complaining that I couldn’t live off of the amount I was getting. I also lived with a dick of a step dad who had no kids, who was earning a good wage and refused to give my mum any extra money to support us or buy us things we needed and she only received a very minimal amount of centre link and didn’t fraud the system. She just made do with what she got and put up and shut up. She also didn’t get child support from my father so yeah I’ve been there. I also know a man who’s earning a good wage, pays a crap load of child support for one kid and he still gives his new wife who has kids outside of their marriage as well as joint kids access to all of his money and doesn’t discriminate when it comes to any of their kids needing something and he was like that before they got married too. Their money is their money and now all of their kids are old enough she works too and when they weren’t old enough he supported her so she could stay home and be their mum. So we’ve either got unicorns of men or it’s not the norm for a man who earns a really really good wage to treat the woman he loves and has married like the OP of the original post.
Either hes financially abusing you or you're being greedy and wanted to keep PPS all the time you were dating and getting married (or lazy, as it's not a 2nd income, if you want that much income get a job).
You should have sorted this out before you married.
Plenty of families live on a low budget together, his income needs to be family income, and run a calculator to figure out what you'll get, then make it work. And tell centrelink asap before you get caught and get a massive debt and fine, you could get cut off completely.
You do know that claiming and single partner pension while in a relationship is fraud right? When you go in there and change from single to married they are going to have a lot of questions and even if you weren’t living to together before hand you still would have been in a relationship. You will most probably have to pay back ALOT of money, everything that you received that you were not entitled too. That’s if they don’t have to charged with fraud and end up having to spend time in prison. Which is a very real possibility. People like you are the reason that single parents get such and hard time for claiming a pension. And as for child support your husband needs to support his other child, they fact that you have a child from a previous relationship means nothing when it comes to what he has to pay. If you can’t afford to live off his income alone, well I guess you will have to do what most other people do and get a job!
I’m a single mum, get minimal money from Centrelink.
What a strange world we live in where you’re married to a partner with a good paying job and you are worse off, but as a single mum, on your own, you don’t need to work.
I don’t know how you survived before without working.
You must be better at budgeting than me.
Surely finances were discussed before you got married?
How were you able to keep getting PPS whilst in a relationship?
The only way I can understand is if you didn’t live together.
You’re a much braver soul than me, no way I would marry someone as a single mum with a child without living with them first to see how my child and partner got along day in day out.
This whole scenario is very odd to me.
You need to sit down with him and work out a budget, I also think you need to work whilst getting your business off the ground.
I would want to contribute financially to the household, especially since he isn’t your child’s father and he has such big financial obligations to his former family.
You’re a team, you need to work it out together and help each other.
It always amazes me when someone’s go to is Centrelink rather than employment, Centrelink is supposed to be a temporary measure when in a bind, especially as a single parent, person with a disability, unable to find work, husband loses job/ill etc.
It is not something that should be relied upon indefinitely when you are in a marriage to a healthy man with a good job that works full time.
Forget about Centrelink altogether, it’s not an income option for you anymore.
Work out a budget, get a job and stand on your own to feet.
Thanks for the feedback. To all who judged me thanks for being small minded. I haven’t been ripping the system off, we have only just started living together as this was what was best for us. I have my house and he has his each with our own bills. Yes I have been working on and off and declaring everything to Centrelink so my payments would be adjusted depending on my income for the fortnight! Of course we discussed all of this prior to getting married and of course we will make it work. We pushed getting married forward by a year due to my mother having terminal cancer. Although I’m stressed beyond belief I have no regrets as I had my mum walk me down the aisle and I married a beautiful man. We will survive of that I’m sure.
I don’t think you understand, when you go to Centrelink and change your circumstances they are going to want to know how long you have been in a relationship with him for, not how long you guys have lived together. They have a very broad net for what is classes as a relationship. And from that date, you needed to claim as a defacto relationship, and he needed to support you financially from then, not when you moved in together. They don’t care that you had your own place and own bills. If you guys are dating, or even friends with benefits technically he needs to support you
This comment is exactly correct. My husband and I have had to move out of our rental because he lost his full time job a few months ago and had to go on Newstart , as my small part time job as carer for the disabled isn’t enough to pay for all our costs of rent , utilities, food , and petrol . So I had to move in with my sister while he moved in with his uncle as there is no room anywhere for us to live together.
Now we both have separate bills as I have to pay board and lodgings at my sisters and so does he at his uncles . Centrelink still considers us partnered as we are still together of course , but we aren’t eligible for for the higher single rate even tho our living expenses now are actually seperate . The only way we each get the full rate is to genuinely be morally separated . They don’t take into account that we pay our own expenses as we are in two different houses , simply because we are actually still emotionally together . We have no joint expenses as we live very humbly .
So as for the OP, yes, she should have told Centrelink LONG ago that they were a couple , even if they don’t live together. She was actually receiving too much Centrelink payments and has technically frauded . I think it sux tho , as you can live together separated under one roof and get the higher single rates , but not if you are living separately, with seperate higher expenses, but still together in heart . The whole system needs fixing .
Having been someone that only lived with my husband when married and losing all my Centrelink payments when I did, Centrelink only cares about when you started living together - if you were living in separate houses up until this point your fiance had no responsibility to support you. Unless you were to get married and then live separately - then you would update Centrelink too.
People only judge the information you gave them. You came across as woe is me what am I going to do now that I’m married after being in a relationship for a few years and stayed claiming PPS + the Fam taxes. My husband has nothing left after paying 30k in child support and stupid amounts of tax. If he’s paying stupid amounts of tax as in 37c in the dollar he’s earning a shit load and in fact more than my oh is. Becasue he’s no where in that tax bracket. But let’s put it down in writing. If he’s earning 150k
150k - 37c in the dollar = 94.5k
Take away your 30k in child support an he is left with 64.5k
He could
A) quit his high paying job and you then get a high paying job. His child support will drop to $34.30 a month becasue he won’t be earning any money if he quits his job.
Or
B) acknowledge that 64.5k is nothing to sneeze at, remember he only has to pay child support and no other money towards his child until they reach 18 years of age and once he’s stopped paying child support he then has 94.5k a year to live off in his hand and by then your business will be established and you’ll be earning money too.
C) give up his rental or rent out one of the houses you now both own, you said you both have a place. Live on site when he’s working instead of forking out for a rental near work or now earning an income from the property. You’re better off giving up your house and renting your house out so this isn’t seen as additional income in his pocket but yours. Becasue your income isn’t what his child support is based off of. It’s not biologically your responsibility to pay his child support nor is it financially your responsibility to pay it so your earnings are not taken into account. That way you both live in his house, you’re getting an income from your rental. Although it’ll probably be used to pay the rates and for repairs but can be used as a tax break kinda thing. You’re better off and you only have one household of bills to pay.
The problem here lies with him saying he has nothing left when in fact he’s still getting 64.5k on a 150k theory.
If you discussed it before you got married, why are you freaking out now?
Jesus of course you’ll survive, your husband earns 150k! There’s a lot of blended families doing it a lot tougher.
Makes a bit more sense with this info why you're stressed! So good you could have your Mum at your wedding! I was in a similar position to you, working, getting PPS and FTB, I was paying child support too. I got married to a man on a average wage and lost all Centrelink payments- he also pays Child Support for his kids.
Centrelink will take his income into consideration and child support doesn't care how much you earn. That will not change for him. If he is earning a reasonable amount, expect to receive nothing from Centrelink. Get it changed asap so you don't get a debt.
I'm assuming you were living together and/or in an established relationship before getting married, shouldn't you have updated this with centrelink before? How are you going to get around them asking all the questions regarding your relationship when changing your status? Of course they will take his income into account... He's your husband.
Centrelink is not there for you to live off and to pad up your income. I lost my job recently because I needed time off to care for my ill father, and my husband and I were struggling to the point where we had to extend bills to get by. And we weren't able to get any support given how much my husband earnt - it wasn't a lot, but enough for them to say we weren't eligible. I needed more time off to help with my dads care, but needed to go back to work to ensure that my household had enough money to keep on going. Perhaps you need to go and look for job and then have your business on the side.
What I would also be saying is get a joint bank account. He doesn't sound like he's being truthful with regards to his leftover income. Miners earn a lot of money and for him to say he's living pay check to pay check seems suss.