Opted Out of Child Benefit? You May Still Qualify

Ticking the box to stop your Child Benefit payments does not ruin a Bereavement Support Payment claim — as long as what you did was opt out of the payments, not decide never to claim at all. Those two things feel the same at the kitchen table, because in both cases no money arrives, but the benefit system treats them as opposites. One keeps your entitlement alive. The other means you were never entitled in the first place, and it is entitlement, not payment, that the higher bereavement rate turns on.

This is the distinction the whole question hangs on, and it is worth getting straight while it still matters only in theory. Couples caught by the high-income charge are routinely told to "stop the Child Benefit", and most do it the right way — a claim that carries on, with the payments switched off. If that is what you did, the higher rate of Bereavement Support Payment is still open to you, because you remained entitled to Child Benefit for your children throughout. The damage is done only by the other version: the couple who, seeing no point in money that would be clawed straight back, never put a claim in at all.

This page separates being entitled to Child Benefit from being paid it, explains why the high-income charge pushes people to opt out, and sets out exactly which version protects a bereavement claim and which quietly wrecks it.

The short answer: opting out of payments is not giving up the claim

When HMRC lets a family "opt out" of Child Benefit because of the high-income charge, it is offering a very specific thing: you complete a Child Benefit claim as normal, and then ask HMRC not to pay it. The claim exists, is recorded, and stays live. All that changes is that no money leaves HMRC and lands in your account, which is the point — it saves you from paying the charge back through self-assessment.

Because the claim is still there, your entitlement to Child Benefit continues in full. And entitlement is precisely what the higher rate of Bereavement Support Payment asks about. The rule is that you must have been entitled to Child Benefit for a child living with you at the date your partner died. A zero-payment opt-out satisfies that word for word: you were entitled; you had simply asked not to be paid.

So the reassurance, for most people who arrive at this page anxious, is straightforward. If you filled in the Child Benefit claim and then turned off the payments, you have not harmed a future bereavement claim at all. You are in exactly the same position for the higher rate as a family who took the money and paid the charge.

Entitled versus paid: the distinction everything turns on

The benefit system draws a hard line between being entitled to something and being paid it, and Child Benefit is the clearest example of the gap. You can be entitled and unpaid — the opt-out — and the entitlement still does its work in the background. What the higher bereavement rate rewards is the entitlement, because entitlement is what shows the household was raising a child the state recognised.

This is not an accident or a loophole. The rule was written around entitlement deliberately, so that families were not pushed into taking Child Benefit payments they would only have to hand back, purely to preserve some future claim they might never make. The system is trying to be fair here: opting out for the high-income charge is exactly the kind of sensible admin it did not want to punish, so it hung the bereavement test on entitlement rather than on cash received.

The same logic runs through the wider eligibility rules, and it is why children are so central to who gets what after a death. A couple with a live Child Benefit entitlement are in a different position from a childless couple entirely — a gap we set out in cohabiting without children and still excluded and, for the sharpest version, no children, no Bereavement Support Payment.

Why couples opted out: the high-income charge

Almost everyone who deliberately switched off their Child Benefit did so because of the High Income Child Benefit Charge. Where one partner's income rises above a set threshold, a tax charge claws back part of the Child Benefit, and above a higher figure it claws back the whole lot — so a family in that band can end up receiving Child Benefit with one hand and repaying it, through self-assessment, with the other.

From 6 April 2024 the charge applies where the higher earner's adjusted net income is over £60,000, and rises until the full amount of Child Benefit is clawed back once that income reaches £80,000. Faced with paying it all back anyway, many higher-earning households take the zero-payment option: keep the claim, stop the money, avoid the paperwork of paying a charge on income you never really kept.

Source: gov.uk, High Income Child Benefit Charge, accessed 2026.

That is a perfectly rational choice, and — done as a proper opt-out — it costs you nothing on a future bereavement claim. The trap is only for the family that took the reasoning one step too far and concluded there was no point completing a claim at all.

The one version that does damage: never claiming

Here is the version that hurts. A couple work out that the higher earner's income means the whole of the Child Benefit would be clawed back, decide the exercise is pointless, and simply never fill in a claim. No form, no record, no entitlement. On the money, they are in the same place as the family who opted out — nothing arrives either way. On a bereavement claim, they are in a completely different place.

Because the higher rate depends on entitlement, and entitlement comes from having a claim, the family who never claimed have nothing to point to. When the DWP asks whether you were entitled to Child Benefit for a child living with you at the date of death, "we chose not to bother because of the charge" is not entitlement. The higher rate is lost, and the survivor drops to the standard rate — a real difference in money at the worst possible time.

This is why the standing advice, even for a household that will have every penny of Child Benefit clawed back, is to claim and opt out rather than not claim. The claim is free, it protects the bereavement position, it keeps National Insurance credits building for the parent who holds it, and it triggers the child's National Insurance number automatically at 16. The credits point in particular is worth understanding properly, because it is a different currency from the bereavement test — Class 3 voluntary contributions buy State Pension but not bereavement cover sets out how those pieces fit together.

What to send with the bereavement claim

If you are making a Bereavement Support Payment claim and the higher rate depends on your Child Benefit entitlement, the job is to prove the entitlement existed at the date of death, whether or not you were being paid.

Send your Child Benefit reference number and any HMRC letter confirming the claim and the opt-out from payment. If you cannot find the paperwork — and an opted-out claim generates far less of it than a paid one — ask HMRC to confirm in writing that a claim was in place at the date of death, and submit that with your bereavement claim. If the DWP has already refused the higher rate on the basis that no Child Benefit was being paid, that is the point to challenge: ask for a mandatory reconsideration within a month of the decision letter, state plainly that entitlement, not payment, is the test, and attach HMRC's confirmation.

Keep the two claims mentally separate as you do this. One is with HMRC and is about the Child Benefit itself; the other is with the DWP and is about the bereavement payment. The bridge between them is the single fact you are evidencing — that you were entitled to Child Benefit for a child living with you on the day your partner died.

The gap this leaves, and closing it

Sorting the rate out is worth doing, but it is worth keeping the scale in view. The higher rate of Bereavement Support Payment is currently a one-off payment of £3,500 followed by eighteen monthly payments of £350 — meaningful, and better than the standard rate, but nowhere near replacing the income of a higher earner whose salary was large enough to attract the high-income charge in the first place.

Source: gov.uk, Bereavement Support Payment (rates and eligibility), accessed 2026.

That is the uncomfortable arithmetic behind this whole cluster: the households most affected by the high-income charge are, almost by definition, the ones for whom the state's answer falls furthest short. Where money is tight in the aftermath, help with rent through a discretionary housing payment and the other means-tested routes in our guide to bereavement benefits and state support are worth checking. But the reliable way to keep a family's standard of living steady after the loss of a high earner is cover on that earner's life, sized against the income the household actually relies on — a broker can compare life insurance quotes against your own circumstances, without any figures being promised until it is properly underwritten.

A worked example: two households, one high-income charge

Consider two families where the higher earner's income sits well above the £60,000 threshold, so the whole of the Child Benefit would be clawed back either way. In the first household, the parent still completes the Child Benefit claim every time a child is born, and simply asks HMRC not to pay it. Years later, when that parent dies, the surviving partner's Bereavement Support Payment claim is assessed at the higher rate without argument, because HMRC's own records show a live Child Benefit entitlement running right up to the date of death.

In the second household, the parents reason that filling in a claim destined to be clawed back is pointless admin, and never submit one. When the same bereavement happens, the DWP asks for evidence of Child Benefit entitlement at the date of death and there is none to give, because none was ever established. The surviving partner receives the standard rate instead of the higher one — a difference worth a substantial sum over the life of the award — for a household whose actual circumstances, income and children were otherwise identical to the first.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Both the High Income Child Benefit Charge and the Child Benefit entitlement rule are UK-wide, run by HMRC, so the entitled-versus-paid distinction works the same way wherever in the UK you live, including Northern Ireland, where HMRC administers Child Benefit exactly as in Great Britain.

Bereavement Support Payment is also UK-wide in substance, but in Northern Ireland the claim is handled by the Department for Communities rather than the DWP, so a mandatory reconsideration about the higher rate goes to that department. The test it applies is identical: entitlement to Child Benefit for a child living with you at the date of death, not whether the money was being paid.

Frequently asked questions

Does opting out stop a bereavement claim?

Not if you opted out of the payments while keeping the claim itself, which is what the zero-payment option does. The higher rate of Bereavement Support Payment depends on being entitled to Child Benefit for a child living with you, not on the money being paid.

What is the difference between opting out and not claiming?

Opting out means a claim was completed and HMRC was asked to stop paying, so entitlement continues and National Insurance credits keep building. Never claiming at all means there is no entitlement to point to, and that is the version which damages a later bereavement claim.

What should I send with the claim?

Your Child Benefit reference number and any HMRC letter confirming the claim and the opt-out from payment. If you cannot find it, ask HMRC to confirm that a claim was in place at the date of death and send that with the claim or reconsideration.

What if both partners had income above the threshold and neither wanted to be the named claimant?

Only one person can be the Child Benefit claimant for a given child, and it does not need to be the higher earner — the charge is based on whichever partner in the household has the higher adjusted net income, regardless of whose name is on the claim. Many couples in this position name the lower earner as claimant, both because it is that partner's National Insurance credits that most need protecting and because it makes no difference at all to the charge, which follows the higher income either way. Whoever is named, the entitlement test for a later bereavement claim is unaffected by which partner holds it.

Can I backdate a Child Benefit claim I never made if my partner has since died?

Child Benefit itself can be backdated by up to three months from the date HMRC receives a new claim, but that does not rewrite history for the entitlement test on a Bereavement Support Payment claim, which looks at whether you were entitled at the date of death. If no claim existed on that date, a claim made afterwards cannot retrospectively create entitlement that was not there at the time. This is exactly why the standing advice is to claim and opt out even when every penny would be clawed back — it is the only way to guarantee the entitlement is in place if the worst happens later.