What happens if you change how you transfer child support

If there’s a reason that makes it difficult or unsafe for you to collect some or all of your child support, call us on the Child Support enquiry line to discuss your options. This includes reasons like financial abuse or family violence.

Changing from Private Collect to Child Support Collect

You can ask us to collect child support on your behalf. We can collect either:

• up to 3 months of unpaid child support in normal circumstances
• up to 9 months of unpaid child support in exceptional circumstances.

Read more about exceptional circumstances in the Child Support Guide on the Department of Social Services website.

You can get legal advice about court action to collect unpaid child support from periods earlier than this. This will be at your own cost.

If you collect child support privately and are finding it difficult to collect some or all of it, call us on the Child support enquiry line.

Changing from Child Support Collect to Private Collect

If we collect child support for you and you then decide to collect privately, either of the following can happen:

• we continue to collect any overdue amounts for you
• you choose to collect any overdue amounts privately.

If you choose to collect overdue child support yourself, we’ll assume you’ve collected the full amount. This may impact how much FTB we’ll pay you. The unpaid child support arrears you choose to collect privately will be included in the FTB maintenance income test (MIT), from the date of your request until the end of that financial year.

Call us on the Families line before you choose to collect overdue amounts privately to understand the impact on your FTB.