Child Support and Unsupported Child's Benefit: How Inland Revenue Fits In

The Child Support Obligation

When you apply for Unsupported Child's Benefit, Work and Income requires you to help identify and locate the child's natural parents as part of the application process.

The reason is straightforward: once UCB is granted, Inland Revenue (Te Tari Taake) assesses a formula-based child support liability against the natural parents. The government is paying you to care for the child, and it recovers some of that cost from the parents who are not providing that care themselves.

What Inland Revenue Collects

Inland Revenue calculates child support using the standard formula based on each parent's income, the number of children, and the care arrangements. The parents receive an assessment notice and are required to pay child support — just as they would in any separated-parent arrangement.

The key difference: because the child is on UCB rather than living with a parent, the child support collected goes to the Crown first to offset the public cost of the benefit. You do not receive the child support directly unless it exceeds the weekly UCB rate.

When You Receive the Excess

If Inland Revenue collects more child support from the parents than the standard weekly UCB payment rate, the excess is passed through to you as the caregiver. This is called the child support pass-through.

For most kinship caregivers, the pass-through is unlikely to produce a significant amount — the parents' circumstances (addiction, imprisonment, mental health crisis, low income) often mean they have limited ability to pay. But it is worth understanding how it works because the excess payment is treated as chargeable income for some supplementary benefit calculations, particularly Temporary Additional Support (TAS). If you receive TAS, the excess child support can reduce your TAS entitlement.

What If You Cannot Locate the Parents

Caregivers sometimes do not know where the parents are. You are expected to provide what you know — names, last known addresses, phone numbers, employment details — but you are not expected to conduct a private investigation. If a parent has genuinely disappeared, tell your case manager. Work and Income will note the efforts made and proceed with the information available.

If contact with a parent would create a safety risk — for example, where family violence or a protection order is involved — MSD policy allows the parental contact requirement to be waived. Make sure your case manager is aware of the risk before any contact is attempted.

Child Support Is Not Your Responsibility to Enforce

You do not have to chase child support payments yourself. That is Inland Revenue's job. Your obligation is limited to helping Work and Income identify the parents at the application stage. After that, the assessment, collection, and enforcement sit with Inland Revenue.

If a parent falls behind on payments, it does not affect your UCB rate — the benefit continues regardless of whether child support is actually collected.

Understanding the Full Picture

The interaction between child support, UCB, Working for Families tax credits, and supplementary allowances can be confusing — especially when the child's financial record needs to transition from one arrangement to another. The complete NZ caregiver guide maps out how each payment stream interacts, so you know exactly what affects your entitlement and what does not.

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