Supporting parents to meet their child support responsibilities
We have a range of measures in place to ensure parents meet their child support responsibilities
based on their true financial capacity.
A small number of parents, who are not motivated to meet their child support responsibilities,
may structure their personal and financial affairs to avoid or minimise child support.
Detecting these cases early helps us to guide these parents towards higher levels
of commitment.
We focus our efforts on the small group of parents who actively avoid their child
support responsibilities and who often operate outside government systems to evade
their responsibilities by participating in the cash economy or acting fraudulently.
We also focus our efforts on the small group of receiving parents who under-report
their income to unfairly maximise the amount of child support or Family Tax Benefit
they receive.
How you can help us to help you.
Overdue child support payments
We aim to make it easier for separated parents to support their children and to
meet their child support responsibilities. Most parents want to do the right thing.
However, some need extra support, education and advice.
If a parent doesn’t meet their responsibilities, we will work with them to
get the best outcome for their children and both parents. If a parent misses multiple
payments, we’ll work with them to help them pay the overdue amount without causing
undue hardship to them or their children.
Why child support would be overdue,
what happens if parents don’t pay overdue child support, and how we can recover
overdue child support.
Click on one of these topics for more information:
Collection methods
Where there is little or no evidence of a parent’s commitment to meeting their
child support responsibilities or where there is evidence of fraud, we rely on enforcement
activities to ensure we achieve the best outcome for children, parents and taxpayers.
The methods we can use to collect child
support.