In this section:

How to claim Child Benefit
Child Benefit claim form
Help with the Child Benefit claim form
Child Benefit and birth and adoption certificates
Finding your Child Benefit number or proving you qualify
How claiming Child Benefit can protect your State Pension
More than one claim for Child Benefit for the same child
Getting Child Benefit on behalf of someone else

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More than one claim for Child Benefit for the same child

More than one claim for Child Benefit for the same child

If you and another person both claim Child Benefit for the same child, only one of you can get it. You should try to choose between you who should be the one to get the benefit.

Try to decide who gets Child Benefit

If you're responsible for a child you can claim Child Benefit. But there may be someone else who pays towards the cost of looking after the child and they also want to claim. For example, if your child:

lives with a relative but you pay for their upkeep
lives with you but your partner who doesn't live with you pays towards looking after them
spends part of the week with you and part with someone else

If both you and another person want to claim Child Benefit it's best if you sort out between you who should claim. Normally we pay Child Benefit to the person the child lives with. A child normally lives with you even if they're away for a short while - so long as that's not more than 56 days in any 16 week period.

Child Benefit if your child lives with someone else

If you or your partner isn't working or works part-time

You - or your partner - may not work enough hours to pay full National Insurance contributions (NICs). So it could be better if that person claims Child Benefit because this can help protect their entitlement to the State Pension.

How claiming Child Benefit can help protect your State Pension

You're already getting Child Benefit and someone else claims for the same child

You might already be getting Child Benefit and someone else decides to claim too. For example:

your child lives with a relative and that relative decides to claim
your child lives with you and another person starts to pay towards the upkeep of the child

In some cases you won't know about this other claim until we write to you to say that we have received it. We won't be able to tell you who has made the claim. But if you know that someone else has applied for Child Benefit you should try, if you can, to decide between yourselves who should get the payment. If you decide that you don't want to carry on with your claim, let us know as soon as possible.

If you can't decide who gets the payment and both of you still want to claim, we will decide who to pay. If we decide that someone else will get the Child Benefit, your payments will stop.

If you can't decide who should get Child Benefit

If you can't decide who should get Child Benefit and you and the other person both make a claim, we will have to decide who to pay it to. We choose certain people ahead of others. This is the order we'll use:

the person your child lives with
the wife, when the husband and wife live together
a parent ahead of a non-parent
a mother, when parents who aren't married live together

The decision on who'll get Child Benefit won't necessarily be the same for tax credits - if you're getting them.

If you are unhappy with our decision

If you're not happy with our decision about who should get the payment, you can ask for an explanation of how we reached the decision.

Find out about problems with your Child Benefit - where to start

Changing your mind about who gets Child Benefit

If you want someone else to claim Child Benefit instead of you, for example to help protect their pension, you'll need to tell us that:

You want to stop getting Child Benefit.
You want someone else to get it instead. That person will need to make a new claim to Child Benefit.

You can tell us at any time that you want to stop getting Child Benefit. But you will need to tell us between 7 April and 30 June at the latest, if you want someone else to get pension protection. If you tell us after that date they will lose out on a year's worth of pension protection.

If you change your mind again later you can make another claim for Child Benefit.

How claiming Child Benefit can protect your State Pension

If your circumstances have changed

You must tell us straight away if your circumstances change, for example if your child goes to live with someone else.

Find out which Child Benefit changes you need to report

Contacting the Child Benefit Office

If you need to get in touch with the Child Benefit Office you can send in a query online using the link below. Or you can call the Child Benefit Helpline on Tel 0845 302 1444 or textphone Tel 0845 302 1474. The Helpline is open between 8.00 am and 8.00 pm, seven days a week, except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day.

If your preferred language is Welsh you can call on Tel 0845 302 1489, and if you're calling from outside the UK Tel + 44 161 210 3086.

Send us your Child Benefit question online