National insurance gaps due to not claiming child benefit

[3boysandadog23]

Hello, I have some gaps in my national insurance years from 2017 due to not claiming child benefit. My husband is a higher earner so we would not benefit with money from child benefit but I should have been claiming to get national insurance credit (as I’m a sahm). Has anyone had any success in getting years back when they should have been claiming? If so, how?

I paid the NI contributions separately, it's worth it.

You can’t get it back dated. You can pay the missed national insurance payments.

You can get it backdated if it is missing in this way. Martin Lewis did a podcast about this last week: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0hwtm3p?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

When you say you did not claim , had you registered the child for cb at any point previously? If so you would get ni credit even without payments until they were 12.

We also don’t qualify for the payments however my account is set up to still receive the NI years. Basically I think that child benefit is split into two parts, the payment and the NI benefit. Even if you don’t qualify for one you can still take the other.

I would call HMRC and discuss, they sorted it for me when dd was born.

We don’t take the payment at all fwiw. I know others take it and pay it back for various reasons but that’s not necessary for NI.

Thank you. No, I hadn’t registered for CB before, only did it in the last year but I understood it all. I read the Martin Lewis advice which is why I am trying to claim, but I don’t think he actually says who to ring. I rang HMRC and they said it’s not to do with them, also rang a child benefit line who said not them either. Thanks for your advice

I found this which might be helpful - looks like you'll need to wait until 2026 to be able to claim the backdated part.

community.hmrc.gov.uk/customerforums/ni/7b4cfbd6-9fe7-ed11-913a-00155d978126

Hopefully you've already put in your claim though so they have something to backdate when the time comes.

Depending on how big the gap, you might not need to pay to fill it, because you only need 35 qualifying years, and you have over 50 years to make these (from age 16 to 67) so have quite a few spare.

On his podcast last week, Martin Lewis was talking about a tool they'd devised to go through all the variables, so have a look at:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2024/04/new-online-state-pension-boosting-tool/

Nope. I phoned and got transferred all around—NI, child benefit….I explained that I didn’t actually want the money, only the “years”, as I didn’t know I was supposed to be “claiming” and opting out of payment. Will just suck it up and buy the years…we have until April 2025. Some of my years are cheaper to buy due to working for part of that year, so I may only buy those.

@Chatonette Argh, that’s what I fear will happen. I’m going to try hard though, I’ll let you know if I have any luck, but I’m not holding out much hope!

Let me know if you get anywhere. I tried about a year ago, and was trying to backdate for NI credits from 2013-2017.