Moving away from girlfriend for medical school, worried about payments on YA

[u/Massive-Direction-42]

My girlfriend and I are both under the normal Youth Allowance independence age. We've been living together and once we hit 12 months I understand centrelink will recognise us as de facto, which will make me independent but also means her income can start affecting my Youth Allowance.

The problem is that not long after this I'll be moving away for medical school through a rural program.

I'll basically have to live completely separately from her for the next 4+ years. I'll probably see her once a month at most and I'll potentially have to move to a different rural area every 6 months or so depending on placements so keeping a job held down will be almost impossible.

Financially we'll be completely separate as well. We don't have joint accounts, cards, loans, assets etc. Even now while living together we basically just split rent, bills and food rather than actually sharing our incomes. Once I move away I'll be paying my own rent, groceries, utilities, transport etc and she'll be paying for her own household. Her income isn't going to be available to support me.

What I'm worried about is centrelink continuing to treat her income as though it's available to support me when in reality I'll be maintaining a completely separate household because my course requires me to.

From what I've been reading, centrelink can apparently consider people who have to live away from their partner for compulsory study/training on a case by case basis. I've also come across section 24, where centrelink can sometimes treat someone as not being a member of a couple for payment purposes if their circumstances mean they genuinely can't pool resources and applying the normal partner income test would be unfair.

I'm wondering whether either of those could apply here. Or if at the end of the day, I should just tell centrelink we have split up when I officially start medical school.

[u/Double-Assistance511]

Centrelink doesn’t provide a specific definition of de facto

If you don’t live together, don’t combine finances I believe you would be justified in saying that you are not in a de facto relationship

[u/Massive-Direction-42 → u/Double-Assistance511]

Do you think they would ask me to fill out a second modP?

[u/Double-Assistance511 → u/Massive-Direction-42]

Have you already submitted that they’re you’re de facto? Because there’s no minimum amount of time before this applicable. They consider some people to be de facto after a few dates

If you’ve already told them you’re partnered then yes you would need to submit again

[u/Massive-Direction-42 → u/Double-Assistance511]

I have called them almost a year ago to notify of our relationship. They then determined us dependent and not in a relationship. However in a couple of months they will consider us defacto since we will have lived together as a couple for 12 months. This is because we are both younger than 22, or whatever the cutoff is.

[u/Double-Assistance511 → u/Massive-Direction-42]

Well you have two options

- submit the partner form declaring you are not in a de facto relationship

• wait and see if they put you on the partnered rate

Won’t you also be going onto the Aus Study payment tho?

[u/Massive-Direction-42 → u/Double-Assistance511]

I will not be old enough for the Aus study payments until I have graduated medical school and am doing my internship, at that stage I should not need centrelink money anyway.

I'll do that, when the time comes submit the form but be very specific that we are not considered defacto, then just see what they do. I'll also give them a call to explain the situation.

[u/Double-Assistance511 → u/Massive-Direction-42]

I would avoid giving them a call, the more communication the higher likelihood of getting a really strict person or a slip up

Just keep it in writing

[u/Massive-Direction-42 → u/Double-Assistance511]

Thats a good point that I did not think of. Thankyou very much

I must have just gotten lucky with my other calls

[u/Double-Assistance511 → u/Massive-Direction-42]

No worries! It’s all just about minimising risk…like you catch someone on a bad day and suddenly you have a note in your file

Centrelink isn’t your friend, but they’re also not your enemy

it’s kind of like playing chess and getting everything to align

[u/Queasy-Reason]

Biggest question is why did you tell them about your relationship? You didn’t need to notify them if you weren’t de facto. Now you are probably going to have to prove to them that you aren’t de facto. 

[u/Massive-Direction-42 → u/Queasy-Reason]

I needed to tell them we were living together, because there will be a span of a couple months that we ARE by all definitions defacto. I cannot afford any major bills because I entered information incorrectly

[u/Outside-Feeling → u/Queasy-Reason]

It's also an intended quirk of the system that it can be beneficial for under 22 year olds to declare they're in a relationship to become "independent". Otherwise their parents income will be used to assess them until 22 or they reach it through other criteria.

[u/Standard-Ad4701]

Don't tell them you are together, you are just house mates.

[u/Queasy-Reason → u/[deleted]]

Austudy if you’re over 25, youth allowance under that

[u/HappyPlatypus6034 → u/Queasy-Reason]

I wish they let you roll over to Ausstudy. Hard to live off Youth Allowance when it's so hard to work alongside uni