We want to gift our daughter $200k. Will that get us on the age pension?

Opinion

November 4, 2026 — 5:01am

We are considering giving our daughter, a single mother of two girls, a $200,000 advance on her inheritance to help her buy her first home. I intend to have proper documentation prepared to record the advance, including an agreement similar to a prenuptial agreement to protect her in the event of a future relationship.

I am 69 and my wife is 63. We are both retired. I have $980,000 in superannuation and my wife has $220,000. We also have $320,000 in a term deposit and $137,000 in a bank account. We own our home, worth approximately $1 million. How long would Centrelink continue to assess the $200,000 advance as a gift? I estimate it could take another ten years before we qualify for a meaningful part age pension, assuming annual spending of $75,000 and investment returns of 7 per cent. Does that sound reasonable? Finally, would the gift or our financial position affect our eligibility for the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card?

Provided the $200,000 is a genuine gift rather than a loan, Centrelink will cease to assess the amount above the allowable gifting limit five years after the gift is made. You’ll need to be particularly careful with the legal documentation to ensure that arrangements intended to protect your daughter don’t inadvertently turn the gift into a repayable loan.

After the gift, you’ll have approximately $1.457 million in financial assets. Although the $220,000 your wife holds in superannuation will not count under the Centrelink assets test until she reaches 67, provided she leaves it in accumulation phase, your remaining assessable assets are still well above the couple’s age pension assets test cut-off point.

If you enter $1.457 million into the Retirement Drawdown Calculator on my website, assuming annual returns of 7 per cent and initial withdrawals of $75,000 indexed to inflation, you’ll find that the money could still be worth around $1.7 million in ten years. On those assumptions, I doubt you’ll qualify for an age pension unless your financial circumstances change significantly.

The Commonwealth Seniors Health Card is not assets tested, so having substantial investments doesn’t automatically disqualify you. Eligibility depends on your taxable income plus deemed income from account-based pensions.

Based on the figures you’ve supplied, you may well qualify, but you should check your assessable income against the current limits.

You have said that once a person has used their maximum transfer balance cap, they cannot transfer any more money into pension mode during their lifetime. I transferred $2 million into pension mode in August 2025 and have since made lump sum withdrawals totalling $500,000, which were paid into my bank account. My understanding is that these withdrawals allow me to transfer another $500,000 from my accumulation account into a new pension account. My myGov account shows available cap space of $550,000 and a personal transfer balance cap of $2 million. Does this mean I can make further transfers into pension mode?

Yes, provided your withdrawals were processed as lump-sum commutations rather than pension payments. Commutations free up transfer balance cap space to enable further transfers into pension mode, while pension payments do not.

Before proceeding, ask your super fund to reconcile the $550,000 shown in myGov with your stated $500,000 of withdrawals. If the available cap space is confirmed as correct and all transactions are up-to-date, you can transfer up to $550,000 into pension mode.

My wife and I are both members of AustralianSuper, and we have each nominated the other as the 100 per cent beneficiary of our superannuation through a non-lapsing death benefit nomination. I would like to clarify what happens in the following scenario. Imagine that 25 years from now we are both old and forgetful. My wife passes away, and her superannuation benefits are paid to me in accordance with her nomination. Six months later, I also pass away. By that time, my original non-lapsing death benefit nomination, which names my wife as my sole beneficiary, is still in place and has not been updated. What happens to the money remaining in my AustralianSuper account when I die?

We have two children, and our wills state that our estate is to be distributed to them when the surviving parent passes away. However, I understand that superannuation does not automatically form part of a person’s estate and that a will may not determine who receives the superannuation benefits. As the non-lapsing nomination form does not appear to provide an option to nominate alternative beneficiaries if both my wife and I have passed away, I would like to understand what happens if my nominated beneficiary has already died. Would my remaining superannuation benefits be paid to my estate, distributed in full to our two children, or handled in another way? Would the provisions in our wills have any effect on the distribution? And what arrangements does AustralianSuper offer to ensure that, when the surviving parent dies, any remaining superannuation benefits are distributed to our two children in accordance with our wishes?

Leigh Mansell of Heffron tells me that although your nomination is described as non-lapsing, it cannot operate if the nominated beneficiary has already died. If your wife dies before you and you don’t update your nomination, it will no longer be valid when you die.

AustralianSuper’s trustee would then decide how to distribute your death benefit under superannuation law and the fund’s rules. It could pay the benefit directly to one or both children, to the legal personal representative of your estate, or divide it between them. Neither your children nor your estate would have an automatic entitlement.

Your will would apply only to the amount paid to your estate, after taxes and debts are settled, and not to any benefits paid directly to your children. For greater certainty, you could update your nomination after your wife’s death, naming your children in specified proportions or your legal personal representative so the benefit passes through your estate under your will.

However, you would need to check the nomination requirements and tax consequences at that time, as superannuation law and AustralianSuper’s rules may change over the next 25 years.

We are an age pension couple who have gifted $10,000 to our grandchildren in November 2022, October 2024 and January 2027. We understand Centrelink allows gifts of $10,000 a financial year, up to $30,000 over five years, without affecting our pension. Does the first gift cease to count on July 1, 2027 or must we wait until its fifth anniversary on November 10, 2027? We would like to make another $10,000 gift in August 2027, but Centrelink has given us conflicting advice.

You can make the further $10,000 gift from July 1, 2027 without the deprivation rules applying. The $30,000 gifting limit applies over five financial years, not five years from each gift’s anniversary. From July 1, 2027, your November 2022 gift falls outside the relevant period.

The separate five-year period measured from the actual gift date applies only to excess gifts assessed under the deprivation rules.

Noel Whittaker is the author of Retirement Made Simple and other books on personal finance. Email: noel@noelwhittaker.com.au.

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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Noel Whittaker, AM, is the author of Making Money Made Simple and numerous other books on personal finance.Connect via X or email.

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