Income maintenance period

For this period, you may not get any income support payment, or you may get a reduced payment rate.

What an income maintenance period is

An income maintenance period is an amount of time you may need to wait before you get a payment. It may also be a period of time where a reduced payment amount applies. This is because when you left or lost a job your employer paid you or your partner some money.

When it applies

It may apply if you or your partner left or lost a job and the employer paid a lump sum. This could include any of the following:

• sick leave
• annual leave
• long service leave
• a termination payment
• a redundancy payment.

Which payments it applies to

An income maintenance period may apply if you’re claiming or getting any of these payments:

• Newstart Allowance
• Partner Allowance
• Parenting Payment
• Sickness Allowance
• Youth Allowance
• Widow Allowance
• Farm Household Allowance.

It may also apply if you’re claiming or getting either:

• Austudy
• Disability Support Pension, except if you're permanently blind.

When to claim

Submit your claim even if you or your partner haven’t got any money from the employer yet. We’ll let you know if you can get a payment, how much you’ll get and when we’ll start paying you.

What the waiting period will be

We’ll calculate your waiting period based on how much the employer paid you or your partner when the work ended.

For example, a 10 week redundancy payment may result in a 10 week income maintenance period. This would start from the date you or your partner get the redundancy payment.

You may get a partial payment from us during the income maintenance period. This depends on the amount of the final payment from the former employer.

We’ll assess this and let you know.

When you may get a waiver

If you’re experiencing severe financial hardship you can either:

• tell us as part of your phone appointment with us
• call us on your regular payment line at any time.

We may reduce or waive this waiting period. We can only do this if the financial hardship is due to unavoidable or reasonable expenses. You’ll need to give us proof such as receipts.