SAHM should I claim and repay child benefit for NI credit despite being over the household threshold?

[Rowse]

I became a SAHM after my second was born in 2023 and it occurred to me the other day that way back when my first was born I heard that if you’re a SATM/D you should claim child benefit even if your partner earns over £60,000 because you would then be earning National Insurance credit whilst not working.
I understand things have changed in Jan 25 and now there are charges depending on how much you earn.
My DH earns approximately £120,000 so we are not eligible for child benefit and have never claimed it because giving it back seemed like an unnecessary faff. But now I’m not working I wonder if I’m better off claiming child benefit and paying it back (possibly also being charged under new rules?) so that I don’t have such a gap in my NI for the future?
I will probably return to work in a few years when my youngest is at school but have no set plans to do that yet as I have a SEN child and the future is uncertain.
I would appreciate any advice on what the best thing to do as a SAHM is to protect my state pension and future situation, or signposting to any helpful websites

You can 'claim it' but you just tick a box to say you don't actually want to receive the money. That way you get the NI credits but you don't have to pay back. My husband is in the same boat so we did exactly that.

Absolutely claim it. Or check your pension forecast and have husband pay your credits to cover the gap.

You should make the claim and can opt out of payment and still get the NI credits. Having a claim for all your children means they automatically get their NI number too

Making NI payments would be a total waste of money. She just needs to submit the claim and tick the box to say she doesn't want the payments, then she'll get them for free.

Yes as everyone has said, just tick the box to say you don't want to receive the payments. That's what we do, they also sent me a letter confirm.

If your child with SEN gets DLA then you can claim Carer's Allowance (no matter how high your DH's earnings) which will pay NI credits (and for as long as you get the CA, whereas Child Benefit only pays NI credits up to age 12).

Thank you everyone, really helpful responses and thankfully it sounds far more straightforward than I imagined!

It is really easy - my DH gets his the credit. But given you haven’t paid it for the last couple of years, I’d look at whether you can back pay so that you have a complete record. It’s not horrendously expensive to do. You can go on the government gateway to check your NI history.

Not sure if this applies to you but worth checking

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/latesttip/#hiya

Definitely do it and tick the box to not receive the money, as it'll add years to your NI contributions, which, I'm sure, will be more years than they are currently in order to get full state pension by the time you retire.

Claim and opt out of receiving payments, unless you would benefit from the cash flow over the year between payments and repaying.

Thanks - I’ll get DH to check his forecast and see if we need to.