Child support debt relief

What happened?

A complainant submitted a claim for Disability Support Pension (DSP) with Centrelink on behalf of their child. To prevent a potential debt, Centrelink advised them to stop the family payment that they currently received for the child while the claim was being assessed. The claimant accepted this advice and stopped the family payment.

The DSP claim was rejected, and a decision review took place. The family payment was on hold for this period. The review upheld the rejection of the claim, so the complainant applied for the family payment to recommence.

Approximately 1 year later, Centrelink contacted the complainant saying that it wanted to assess the original DSP claim, despite the complainant believing they no longer had a claim as it was rejected.  The assessment resulted in the DSP being approved and backdated to the time of the original application.

However, as the family payment had been reinstated, a debt was raised against the claimant.

The complainant believed that the debt was unfair, as they had taken all steps to cancel the family payment, and only had it reinstated when they thought that Centrelink rejected the DSP claim. They applied for a review of the debt.

After about 6 months, having followed up with Centrelink on the status of the review several times, the complainant contacted our Office.

What did we do?

The complaints officer assessed the application and decided to make a preliminary inquiry to ask the agency about the complaint.

Outcome of our inquiry

After receiving our inquiry, Centrelink completed its review of the debt and made the decision to waive the debt in full on the basis that the complainant had been overpaid because of an administrative error.