National Insurance Contributions Transfer

Friday13th

Hi there,

Does anyone know if I can transfer my unneeded NI contributions class 3 over to my partner who is a stay at home dad. The messages online are confusing. I've read:

Parents and foster carers

If you’re a parent and you’ve registered to receive Child Benefit and your child is under the age of 12, you will get Class 3 credits towards your state pension. But you must have registered for child benefit even if you’ve chosen not to receive it because you earn more than £50,000. Read more in my guide to
SAVVY TIP: You can transfer National Insurance credits to your husband, wife or partner if you’re getting child benefit. You have to fill in a transfer form. You can download this from the Gov.uk website.

On the Gov.uk website however it notes the following criteria:

Transferring entitlement to credits for parents and carers

From 6 April 2010, if the person who was awarded Child Benefit already has a qualifying year on their National Insurance account during the period of credits for parents and carers, their spouse, partner or civil partner can apply to transfer thecredits to their own National Insurance account. Certain conditions need to be met for the credits to be transferred. These are:

• you reached State Pension age on or after 6 April 2008, or in the case of a bereavement benefit claim your spouse or civil partner died on or after that date

the Child Benefit claimant cannot get credits because their earnings were equal to or above the qualifying earnings factor for that year

• you were living with the Child Benefit claimant for the relevant period and you were sharing the care for a child under the age of 12

• you would have been able to get Child Benefit if your spouse, partner or civil partner had not made a claim for it.

Does that mean we can't claim until my partner retires?

Thanks for any advise you can give.

p00hsticks

Friday13th wrote: »

Hi there,

Does anyone know if I can transfer my unneeded NI contributions class 3 over to my partner who is a stay at home dad. The messages online are confusing.

Friday13th wrote: »

Hi there,
Does that mean we can't claim until my partner retires?

Thanks for any advise you can give.

The bit about state Pension Age is confusing, but yes you can tranfer your credits over now - but what would be even easier going forward is if your partner claimed the Child Benefit in his name - then he'll get the credits automatically until the youngest child is 12.

Friday13th

Thanks for replying, we do intend to transfer over the child benefit but the youngest is already 10 so we will only benefit for a year.


We've applied for the credit transfer, as it's for 2010-2017 so we're keeping our fingers crossed.