Can you claim child benefit if you live abroad

[Hiphopfrogger]

A friend of mine lives abroad, and has done for around 15 years. She now has a DD (she came back to the UK for the birth and stayed with her parents so the DD has a UK passport ). But it seems she’s claiming child benefit. Can you do that from abroad? She’s never worked or paid tax in this country and nor has the DDs father. Is that fraud or is it ok? Googling doesn’t seem to help!

Iirc, the habitual residence test doesn't apply to child benefit, so can still be claimed by UK citizens while resident overseas. But I'm working from memory here, so not to be relied upon!

Ok, have just googled habitual residence test (I hadn’t heard of that before) and it appears you need to have lived in the UK for at least 3 months in order to claim. Unless that just means if you are a foreigner coming to live here? It’s very unclear!!

She has to be UK resident. The child can be non-res. Or at least that's what the roolz were when I looked into it. I work in the UK for 3 mths a year, and pay a full year of NI.
But I am non-resident.
Your friend is probably using someone else's address so it looks like she's resident. Easy to fo, especially if the baby was born in the UK so there's a paper trail effectively showing residence.

(if she is British herself she probably wouldn't have needed to come to the UK for the birth to get a ppt, the baby would be British anyway)

Yes, that’s it, she’s definitely using her parents addresses. And has never worked in the UK herself. It just seems a bit morally wrong.

"Unless that just means if you are a foreigner coming to live here"

Yes, on Parent can live and work in the UK and their Spouse collect the CB for their non British child.

Child benefit can be claimed by British Citizens while being non resident.

We send lots of different benefits to people abroad.

Don’t see how it’s morally wrong if she and baby are British citizens?

People like this grind my gears!! Have kids and expect our country to pay for them while sunning themselves abroad and not even living in England. Surely this must be illegal?

It is morally wrong; she'll also be building up her own NI credits. You could report her, but that's a big step. Can you look up the potential penalties and warn her that she's taking a big risk?

If they are not eligible for the local equivalent it is possible to claim UK CB as an expat.

@Hiphopfrogger, CB isn't paid based on working for anyone, though.

We have to be careful about wanting rules applied to our citizens, because other countries don't apply them and we are in danger of making our citizens stateless and in poverty.

There's lots of Women from around the world, in the uk, who have never worked, but get benefits. They also get residency if they've been clever enough to have their children to a UK Citizen.

A quick Google showed that several countries have a social security agreement with the UK so if she lives in any of those countries then she’s doing nothing wrong.

We moved to oz when our dd was 12 months. We cancelled our child benefit within 3 months of moving there as we were no longer residing in the UK. We were also not eligible for the Aus equivalent as we had to apply for permanent residency to do this, but had to have lived in Aus for 2 years first.

Do you all not know that we pay CB etc to European citizens living at home, with one Parent working in the UK?

The Polish/Romanian/Latvian/Bulgarian citizens claim from our country because they get more.

There were BBC documentaries on this.

@Hiphopfrogger and what's it got to do with you? Bloody hell I would hate to have a friend like you,

If she's doing something illegal she will be caught but why are you so bothered about if she's claiming £20 a week child benefits 😂

Wow so glad your not my friend

I guess it’s a grey area then? For those that say it’s not morally wrong, if she’s not contributing to the country, why should she take from it? I’d never report her though! It’s not my business - I just want to square it away in my mind so I don’t let her (questionable in my mind) actions make me feel cross with her!

@Hiphopfrogger and instead of sitting on MN and posting about your friend because you think it's morally wrong how about you speak to her directly?

I thought you had to be UK resident unless you are Forces or civil service posted abroad by the Government (where you qualify for most stuff as if you were in UK handy as it also means any DC are British rather than British by descent)

Well the thing is ,
It’s very difficult to claim child benefit from another Eu country as a Brit. If you’ve been eg, a sahm before you left the uk, or if you had a period of not paying sufficient ni contributions it’s nearly impossible.
If you aren’t married, and you leave the uk with a partner and become a sahm due to their career, your position in the EU is very precarious.
Because you won’t be able to claim benefits if it all goes tits up with the partner, may not be able to have health insurance, and can’t claim anything from the UK. It’s been an amazingly accommodating system the UK has for EU citizens, but it absolutely isn’t the case in all other member states.

I’m far more concerned about large scale corporate tax evasion than things like this

The country she lives in doesn’t have a social security arrangement with the UK. A lot of people are commenting about one parent living in the UK - in this case, neither parent does.

As far as I know, you have to be resident to claim CB. The paperwork states that if you leave the country for more than X weeks you have to contact them and let them know. 8 weeks max if it's a holiday. 12 weeks for medical treatment or bereavement. But any longer than this and you're not allowed to claim. Exceptions for some countries and crown servants. It's pretty clear.
www.gov.uk/child-benefit-abroad

Well I'd like to know how non resident BCs can claim CB. Because despite both working in the UK and paying a full year's NI, I can't.
Maybe they owe me 16 years

If the country doesn’t have a reciprocal agreement with the uk and she’s never worked in the uk, she probably won’t be able to access a local state benefits system.
So is she married?
Otherwise she’s probably dishonest but wise to claim the benefits (and this presumably counts to get ni contributions in the uk?)
Every year loads of British unmarried women are up shit creek without a paddle abroad due to grey areas and undefined areas of the complex EU tax/ benefits system.

@TheCanterburyWhales with a fake address usually