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

November 4, 2026 — 5:01am

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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........

© The Sydney Morning Herald