Income maintenance period

What an income maintenance period is

An income maintenance period is a length of time where you either:

• need to wait before you get an income support payment
• get an income support payment at a reduced rate.

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:

• JobSeeker Payment
• Partner Allowance
• Parenting Payment
• 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 got 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, 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 for us to consider waiving the waiting period. Call us on your regular payment line to discuss your options.