Marriage or Money: How the DSP Partner Rule Violates the Right to Safety (Article 23 and 28)
Author: JH
Article 23 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) guarantees our right to respect for home and family, while Article 28 ensures our right to an adequate standard of living and social protection. Together, these principles argue that a mental health consumer’s security shouldn’t be traded for their right to a relationship. These rights challenge systemic structures that create avoidable, disability-linked dependency – situations where administrative rules inadvertently force us into a state of vulnerability.
In this article, our lived experience writer, JH, shares their story. They link a common administrative policy – the Disability Support Pension’s (DSP) partner income rules – to an obstruction with these fundamental rights. JH argues that by failing to account for the unique costs and barriers of living with a disability, these rules impose an arbitrary interference on family life and undermine our collective vision of a good life.
Connecting Policy to Reality: JH’s Story
I live with a chronic disability, bipolar disorder, which makes it difficult for me to hold a full-time job. I also work in the creative industries as a freelancer, which makes earning income an uncertain and unpredictable matter, although it suits my talents, personality, and ability well. So it was with great relief that I learned that I got onto the Disability Support Pension (DSP) from Centrelink, which gives me a basic income that reliably comes in every fortnight and enables me to cover the expenses of living.
However, the DSP comes with many conditions, none of which were explained to me when I received it. I only learned that my DSP would be subject to reduction depending on a partner or spouse’s income, should I get into a relationship, from another disabled artist who was campaigning against this condition as a form of marriage inequality.
When I was growing up, I was brought up to think that disabled people should not seek to partner up or get married. Eugenics was very fashionable in the country I grew up in, as well as all around the world, and any genetic, chronic conditions led to taboos around having children or even getting married. I had a cousin who said she had marriage prospects who decided not to pursue her because of mental illness running in her family. Not even that she had a mental illness, but that she had a family history of mental illness.
I have since gotten into a relationship, much to my surprise and in defiance of my expectation that my condition would mean I would not be able to find a partner. I love my partner and we have been together for almost 3 years, but are living apart partly because of this problem. We would ideally like to get engaged and married, but because of this financial disincentive and my fear of being in a financially or otherwise abusive relationship, we have not taken those steps.
It is a human right and part of the human experience to fall in love, get into a relationship, want to live together and want to commit to each other.
Disabled people should not have to choose between a relationship and financial security, in a state that actively offers a pension to disabled people. This arrangement makes disabled people vulnerable to abuse, violence and exploitation, and makes leaving an abusive relationship even harder than it already is. It is a very sad state of affairs that the DSP has this policy, and very discriminatory, as well as unrealistic in a society where many families depend on two incomes to afford the cost of living.
Even a healthy relationship can be under strain if one partner has to bear the burden of earning for both people, and the reality is that disabled people don’t suddenly become not disabled when they commit to a relationship.
Our Call to Action
JH’s experience highlights a critical gap in our current system: while the State is not mandated to structure income support in one specific way, it is legally and ethically bound to ensure that social protection does not produce dependency. Under Article 5 of the UN CRPD, we recognise that equal treatment often requires different treatment. True equality means accounting for disability-related costs; a failure to do so results in a policy that is unequal in effect.
By reforming these rules, we ensure that mental health consumers can pursue love and commitment without the threat of avoidable dependency or the loss of financial independence. It is time to align our income support structures with a model that facilitates relationships rather than penalising them.