Date amended:
External
Policy

The Additional Death Benefit (ADB) provided under the Defence Act 1903, is regulated by Defence Determination 2009/70. This Determination entitles 'dependent children' which it defines as follows:

Dependent child, for a member, means a child of the member who is wholly or partly dependent on the member for economic support and:

  1. is under 16, or
  2. is 16 or more but under 25, and
    1. is in full-time education at a school, college, university or other educational institution, and
    2. is not ordinarily in employment or working on the child's own account.

It can be seen that this definition has been directly derived from the SRCA definition of a 'prescribed child', except that:

  • The child must be a 'child of the member'
  • The child may be either wholly or partly dependent on the member to receive the full ADB entitlement, i.e. there is no discretion to exclude or pay a lesser ADB amount in respect to a child who is only partly dependent. (For the division of the ADB between persons having charge of dependent children, see 4.15 and 4.12.)