Child benefit with slightly complicated living arrangements

CrimsonShore

My child's father and I are in a long-term relationship and live together in practice, but both separately own property and so have separate addresses (in different cities - due to work). We spend all our time together at one or other address and share living expenses such as food, household goods etc., though we separately pay the bills for each property. Now that we have a baby, how do we treat this for the purpose of claiming child benefit? The form asks if we live together at the same address, and we do live together but have different addresses (e.g. for banking, tax etc.). Has anyone come across this before?

badmemory

Which is your main residence @ 100% council tax?  The other could be subject to upto 300% council tax.

CrimsonShore

At the moment we both separately pay council tax, as pre-baby we both spent most time in our own properties. Do you think the only way to regularise things would be to move in together 'officially' and treat one property as a second home? I have been wondering if that's the only option. I would need to look into the financial implications of that though.

TELLIT01

Living together at the same address doesn't prevent anybody having another address as well.  I would just tick 'Yes'.

badmemory

A couple can only have one main address though.

CrimsonShore

Seems like we might just need to move in together on paper.