The big D (or S)

Separation or divorce are never easy, whether you were married for 20 years or in love for three. And when you have kids, you want to keep things as smooth as possible.

After a divorce, you usually do not need to take any action with regard to child benefits; after all, you have enough to worry about. Once the divorce has been finalised, your child benefit fund is notified via the national database. If you and your ex-partner have an agreement whereby you continue to share parental authority, you do not have to do anything. There will be no interruption in the payment of your child benefit in any case.

But maybe you do not want to wait for the official papers. Or it becomes very clear that your situation won’t be the standard co-parenting – by co-parenting we mean that both parents share parental authority, a concept that goes beyond the child’s residence arrangements.

If one of the parents has been granted sole parental authority by a judge in a family court, the family benefit is paid to this parent. If you are in the possession of such a court ruling, please send a complete copy to your child benefit fund. You can always contact them for extra advice.

The basic rules after a divorce

  • A (de facto) divorce does not affect who receives the family benefits.
  • The beneficiary or beneficiaries remain unchanged because it is assumed that the parents will be co-parenting. When parents who were not married to each other separate, co-parenting is also the basic assumption.
  • If you will not be co-parenting in the legal sense, you can refute this assumption with a full copy of the court ruling.

 

Moving in or out

In short: as long as you and your (ex) partner don’t officially live together, your love life is no-one’s business. Your child benefit is fixed and is an unconditional right for your child until they turn 18.

However, adding or removing adults to or from your household might have an impact on income-related supplements.

In the case where the child lives an equal amount of time with each parent, e.g. switching house each week, the income situation in each (new) family unit is looked at separately. In order to determine the family size, children in this situation count in full in both family units. If one or both parents are entitled to the social allowance, the parent receives half of the amount.

In the case where the child spends more time with one parent, only the family in which the child primarily resides can be entitled to the supplement. If the income of that family is below the upper limit, that parent will receive the full supplement.

You are going to live together with your partner, as a result of which two or more households will merge? Notify your child benefit fund as soon as possible. In this way you can avoid a possible correction afterwards if it appears that they paid you too much or too little.

 

Other changes

Above, we only discussed the most common changes. Infino, a child benefit fund, has another list of life-changing situations. They are working on an English website, for now, we listed the pages in French (FR) and Dutch (NL).

  • Parent deceased NL | FR
  • A child goes into foster care NL | FR
  • Moving to another region NL | FR
  • Significant loss of revenue NL | FR
  • New child in the (extended) family NL | FR
  • Other situations can be found in the section FAQ NL | FR

Is there a life change not mentioned here, and that you have questions about? Feel free to contact Infino with your story and/or question: brussels@infino.be / vlaanderen@infino.be / wallonie@infino.be

Did you know that you’re free to choose, or even change your child benefit fund?!

Find out more about Infino at www.infino.be and if you want to join the Infino gang, simply submit your application here.

Rest assured that when you change fund, there is no interruption to your monthly payment.

DISCLAIMER: thevillage.be receives a small commission if you use this link to join Infino.