If you paid too much child support

You may have paid too much child support if both of the following apply:

• there were changes to your assessment that reduced past periods of child support
• your payments were up to date.

If you paid too much child support but don’t want the money back, please call us on the Child Support enquiry line.

If you do want the money back, and it is legally recoverable by us, we’ll contact the other parent and ask them to pay it back.

If they don’t repay the money, we will take action to recover the overpayment.

Once we get the money back from the other parent we’ll refund it to you. You need to give us your bank details so we can do this.

If your Child Support online account is linked to myGov you can tell us online.

Sign in to myGov

You can also use the myGov app.

Using overpayments to reduce debts

If you pay too much child support and have a child support debt in relation to the same case, we’ll use the amount you overpaid to reduce that debt first. After the debt is paid, we’ll refund any amount left over to you when it has been collected.

When we can’t recover an overpayment

We can’t legally recover overpayments that happened because either:

• there was never an entitlement to have a child support case or get payments
• the case ended because the paying parent is no longer a resident of Australia or a reciprocating jurisdiction.

You may have other options if we can’t recover the overpayment. Call us on the Child Support enquiry line and we’ll explain your options.