Child benefits as a newcomer — did you qualify straight away?

Germany: we qualified from the month we registered, but the first payment took almost four months, because the family benefits office asked for more documents twice. Both times it was birth certificates and proof that the children lived with us. My advice is to send everything they could possibly want in the first application, including translated birth certificates, even if the form doesn't ask for them. It saves a round trip.

About six weeks for us in Ireland. The only delay was because my name was spelled differently on two documents, which seems to be the story of my life here.

Same office as Olena, similar timing. The application itself was easy.

Australia had waiting periods on some payments for us as new permanent residents, and it depended on how long we'd held the visa, not how long we'd been in the country. It took me an evening on the official site and one phone call to understand which ones applied. The phone call was more useful than the website.

Thank you all. The idea that it depends on when the family registered rather than when my husband started work is what I suspected. I'll call them this week.

Child benefit rules are one of the areas where the details really do depend on your situation: when each family member registered, where the working parent is insured, whether one parent works in another country, and your residence status. Your friends may all be right about their own cases and still wrong about yours. The official office for the benefit is the only reliable answer, and a phone call, as Tariq says, is often faster than the forms. The Family Rights section for the Netherlands covers the benefits and which office handles them.

Canada links the child benefit to filing taxes here, which I didn't understand at first. We had to file for our first partial year even though our income was small, and the benefit only started after that. If you're new in Canada, file the first year even if you think it doesn't matter. It does.

As a single parent, the child benefit was the difference between just about managing and not in my first months. Apply the week you register, not later.

Fatima, that's exactly our situation from October. Does it matter which month you arrive in for the first tax filing?

Austria asked us for a school enrolment certificate before paying anything. Didn't expect that.