# Child Benefit whilst abroad



## DaisyChains

Hi
Just wondering what the rules are re: child benefit whilst abroad. My partner is a freelancer that lives in Spain but considers himself resident in Ireland as that is where we own our home and will return to permanently when our eldest is in school next September. Me and the kids travel out to stay with him in Spain for 2-3 months at a time, returning home to Ireland for 4-6 weeks in between. So say 2 months Spain, 1 month Ireland. We have lived like this for the past 2 years and really hadn't thought we were doing anything wrong re: claiming the child benefit. Does anyone have the answer?


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## DaisyChains

Should also add, he pays all his tax in Ireland too, so is fully compliant there. Most of his work is UK/Irish company based.


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## mystry4all

Hi,

If you are also claiming child benefit over in Spain. Then you shouldnt get CB in Ireland. If you live in Ireland and have a house over here and paying tax, then i dont think it will be a problem.


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## DaisyChains

Thanks mystry4all. No not claiming any CB in Spain. Left in April 08 - Back June for 4 weeks. Back August for 3. Back October for 2. Back December til Feb 09. Gone from Feb til July 09, so 5 months there and then back for July & August. Will be there from Sept til Dec and back for 2 months at xmas. We have let our house and stay with family on our return visits, but consider ourselves to be habitually resident. Will return home permanently to our own house next July. 

Don't like being accused of fraud, as happened in a recent conversation so would like to clear it up.


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## dereko1969

I'm not sure that you do qualify, while your partner may consider himself tax resident in Ireland Social Welfare and/or Revenue may have a different view of that. See the citizens information site from which this is taken:
*Child Benefit and EU Regulations*

*EU/EEA citizens* and Swiss nationals *working* in *Ireland*, satisfy the habitual residence condition for Child Benefit.
If you are an EU/EEA citizen or a Swiss national and work in a country covered by EU Regulations, the country you work in usually pays Child Benefit *even if* your family is living in another country. However, if your children are living in another EU/EEA country you should still apply for any Family Benefits you are entitled to there. 
If the Family Benefit you get in the country your children are living is less than the Child Benefit payment here, your Irish Child Benefit payment will make up the difference. For more information on how EU rules affect Child Benefit, contact the Child Benefit Section (see 'Where to apply' below). 
Countries covered by EU Regulations are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (excluding the Channel Islands).
*Non-EU/EEA citizens*

Non-EU/EEA citizens must be "habitually resident" in Ireland to quality for Child Benefit. If you are a non-EU/EEA citizen and legally working in this State, you *may* qualify for Child Benefit if your child is also resident here. More information is available in our document on habitual residence.
*Anti-fraud checks*

EU/EEA citizens and Swiss national covered by EU Regulations are currently required to certify every 3 months that they continue to work in this State.   
Non-EU/EEA citizens are currently required to certify twice a year that they and their children continue to live in this State.


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## alaskaonline

> EU/EEA citizens and Swiss national covered by EU Regulations are currently required to certify every 3 months that they continue to work in this State.
> Non-EU/EEA citizens are currently required to certify twice a year that they and their children continue to live in this State.


can someone explain to me while an EU citizen has to certify every 3 months and a NON-EU citizen only twice a year???!


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## mystry4all

I think EU citizen can easy move around in europe and NON-EU citizen couldnt do it. They stay at one place mostly


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## DaisyChains

Hmmm... that's mad, looks like we are not entitled to it. Both parents and kids born in Ireland, house in Ireland, tax in Ireland...CB in Spain! Anyone who has had even the slightest brush with Spanish bureaucracy can imagine how much fun that claim would be!!


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## DaisyChains

jaybird said:


> If your house is let out and you have no residence in Ireland, you can't be habitually resident here.



Of course you can...What if house is let out and you are residing with parents?
Going off to check out habitual residence now. So how can we be habitually resident in Spain if we spend 4-6-8 weeks here every few months?


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## DaisyChains

jaybird said:


> You already said that you spend 2/3rds of your time in spain, you are not habitually resident in Ireland.



Yes, but I'm not habitually resident in Spain either am I, if I spend 1/3 time here?


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## alaskaonline

If I got the countin right, OP is 8 months of the year in Spain and 4 in Ireland. Anyone feel free to correct me.
I kinda get where the OP is coming from in regards to the taxes paid and house and all BUT if OP thinks about this: if a spanish person is employed with an Irish company, pays irish taxes, owns a house in Ireland and stays in Ireland for four out of 12 months, is it still fair to give that person Irish CB because of the tax and house situation? Properly not.

There was an interesting articel in March about the CB in the Irish Times.
[broken link removed]

Appearantly it costs the State €20 million annually! 
Anyway - OP - I think you're still entitled to CB because your husband pays the Irish Tax & PRSI


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## DB74

*People who are* EEA citizens or Swiss nationals and employed or *self-employed in Ireland* and subject to the Irish Social Insurance system or are getting Irish Jobseeker's Benefit *do not have to satisfy the Habitual Residence Condition to qualify for Family Benefits*.

Also, from reading the conditions for satisfying the habitual residence condition, I would say that you do qualify for Child Benefit.


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## DB74

*What is habitual residence?*

The term _habitually resident_ is not defined in either Irish or EC law, but it is intended to convey a degree of permanence evidenced by a regular physical presence enduring for some time, beginning at a date usually in the past and intended to continue for a period into the foreseeable future. *It implies a close association between the applicant and the country from which payment is claimed and relies heavily on fact.*
*Habitual residence cannot be determined simply by reference to a specific period of residence in a country*. The length and continuity of a person's residence must be considered along with other factors.
The following are the relevant factors which have been set down in Irish and European law:

Length and continuity of residence in Ireland or other parts of the Common Travel Area
Length and purpose of any absence from Ireland or the Common Travel Area
Nature and pattern of employment
Your main centre of interest
*Your future intentions to live in Ireland as it appears from the evidence. *
On the other hand, established habitual residents of Ireland who have periods of temporary or occasional absence may still be habitually resident during such absences. *If a person who is working abroad returns at regular intervals to Ireland e.g. to visit family or because a home has been retained here, it is possible that habitual residence in Ireland has not been lost.*

Consideration of a person's main centre of interest is an important factor in determining habitual residence. *A person's main centre of interest would normally be in the country in which s/he has lived all his/her life and has his/her home and family. This may be maintained even where a person lives and works for a period of time in another country.*


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## DaisyChains

DB74 said:


> *A person's main centre of interest would normally be in the country in which s/he has lived all his/her life and has his/her home and family. This may be maintained even where a person lives and works for a period of time in another country.*



This is what I would have thought to be the case.
I am 36, I was born in Ireland and have lived/worked here all my life, apart from summers abroad in college. DP is from the North is 44 and has worked in the Common Area all his life. We have two kids both born in Ireland, aged 4 & 2. 4 year old was due to start school this September but due to financial climate we decided to postpone her place in local national school til next year. We own a house here and rent in Spain. We don't even have a Spanish bank account! 

Anyway haven't been sent one of those compliance forms, I just wanted to clarify the issue. Habitual Residency seems to be open to interpretation and in the end up is at the discretion of faceless bureaucracy!


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## alaskaonline

> Anyway haven't been sent one of those compliance forms


i doubt you'll ever get one. as the SW site clearly states: only EU and Non-EU people are targetted - you're irish, so they properly won't bother even if most of the year you're not living here. me on the other side, being resident (in terms of living here full time) in Ireland for almost ten years (without any interruptions) - I just received my third letter yesterday (third one this year!).


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## DaisyChains

alaskaonline said:


> me on the other side, being resident (in terms of living here full time) in Ireland for almost ten years (without any interruptions) - I just received my third letter yesterday (third one this year!).


 
My sympathies, by sounds of the replies you can look forward to getting them every 3 months from now on. It must be hard to feel at home in a country when they keep checking you're still here every 12 weeks! Even if you do understand the reasons behind the check (ie. cutting down on fraudulent claims)


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## alaskaonline

> you can look forward to getting them every 3 months from now on


 got the last one on August 14th! - so it's not even 3 months. Don't know how this can be an efficient way to cut down on fraudsters considering they keep targetting those who actually pay taxes, prsi, levy every month... nevermind - it'll be a complete different debate.


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## lion_bar

DaisyChains said:


> Hmmm... that's mad, looks like we are not entitled to it. Both parents and kids born in Ireland, house in Ireland, tax in Ireland...CB in Spain! Anyone who has had even the slightest brush with Spanish bureaucracy can imagine how much fun that claim would be!!


 

Spanish!! what about irish bureaucracy?  Since moving back from the UK with our son (who was born in the UK, but that's irrelivant) we've been waiting over a year for the SW to process our child benefit claim.  And it's over a year since the UK CB was stopped because that needs to happen to make a claim here.   

It's a nonsense.


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## galwegian44

My wife has been going crazy because she received her third letter recently and we are both born and bred in Ireland with 3 Irish children. I've tried to explain to her that it's a small price to pay in light of all of the fraudelent claims but I can see her point as well. I talked to some people in the Benefits Section in Donegal and it's quite obvios from their replies that they don't have the resources to manually process these letters every 3 months.

I haven't been courageous enough to tell her that her letters are almost certainly not even being processed. What a joke....it's really about time that the government invested in decent IT Systems and not allow any of the public service IT people to manage the projects. This is one area where I think they need to bring in expensive consultancy (not the usual Big 4) based on previous IT fiascos.



DaisyChains said:


> My sympathies, by sounds of the replies you can look forward to getting them every 3 months from now on. It must be hard to feel at home in a country when they keep checking you're still here every 12 weeks! Even if you do understand the reasons behind the check (ie. cutting down on fraudulent claims)


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## dawe

hi my husband is living in ireland and working part time and we r all irish the children  and me r living in asia  do we qualify for child benefits


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## partnership

It depends on where you pay your rsi. If you pay it in Ireland then that is where you claim child benefit. Had friend whose husband moved to uk to work. She stayed here for 6 months with kids to finish school year and sell house. She ended up having to repay it as should have claimed in uk as that was where rsi paid.


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## gipimann

dawe, you state that you and the children currently live in Asia.

If a parent works in Ireland and the child(ren) don't live here, a claim can only be made for Irish Child Benefit if the child(ren) live in the European Economic Area (EEA).

As your children live outside the EEA, there is no entitlement to Child Benefit even if your husband lives and works here in Ireland.


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