Caf: Can a financial penalty be applied to the cohabiting partner of a recipient?

Following a check by her family allowance fund, a recipient and her partner are penalized for failing to declare the departure of one of the children from the home and for receiving an undue payment of benefits. In the absence of the settlement of this penalty, the director of the fund issues the couple, in order to obtain payment of the undue payment, a constraint (which has the same value as a judgment).

Can the cohabiting partner be penalized in the same way as the recipient?

Public Service replies:

Disputing being concerned by the penalty, the cohabiting partner, in a first step, seizes the justice. For him, only the person receiving the benefits is liable to incur the penalty for not declaring a change justifying the service of the benefits, even in a situation of cohabitation with this beneficiary.

The cohabiting partner is dismissed on appeal, the court finding in particular the existence of a “community of address and interests” between him and the recipient.

The Court of Cassation annuls the constraint on the cohabiting partner. In its view, such a penalty constitutes ‘a sanction of a punitive nature’ which can be imposed only on the recipient. The latter is the only person responsible for the ‘reporting obligation’ the existence of a life in cohabitation, according to the Social Security Code, is of little importance to the body responsible for family benefits.

The penalty cannot therefore be charged to the cohabiting partner, the Court of Cassation ruled.

In the event of a failure to report a change of situation to his family allowance fund, only the recipient may be subject to a financial penalty.