benefits & winning money

jadc007 · 12 July 2017 at 11:58AM

Hi All,

Just need some advice as it is stressing the hell out of me and ill try and make it simple as possible with the situation.

This advice is for my mother who is on EESA? basically she earns X amount a fortnight and gets her rent paid monthly, she has suffered back pain and injury for many years now and is unable to work. december last year she luckily one on a game online £19,000 which when I heard made me so Happy as it was something I did not have to worry about as Im over 100 miles away because it was something i would help out with money when i could for food and etc.

She did not declare the winnings to the social due to not knowing she had too and she put the money into my account for safe keeping and I fed her the money whenever she needed it because she admits she useless with money and I am good with that sort of thing. Now the social have investigated her because obviously she had a huge amount of money go in including her benefit from march 2016 - march 2017.

She is on anti-depressants and after the phone interview 3 days ago she feels like shes having panic attacks.

What is the worse that could happen and what is the best thing that can be done? will her benefits stop from now on? will she have to pay back any money ? she does not have any of the money left due to a passing in the family (paying for funerals) and helping out family.

hope anyone can give some initial advice anyway would greatly appreciate it.

Jack.

marliepanda · 12 July 2017 at 12:19PM

If he ESA is income based (and it probably is if she works a little) then yes she will have to pay some back. It's a sliding scale after £6k and stops completely at 16k, so theee may be an extensive overpayment. This savings threshold also is used for housing benefit

If she can't pay it back they will reduce her benefits to recover it. Paying for funerals (which I assume she didn't 'have' to) isn't an acceptable use, neither is helping our family. She needed to use that money to help herself. Perhaps those that she helped could return the money...

jadc007 · 12 July 2017 at 12:29PM

I totally agree regarding funeral payments (her sister) and helping family here and there which is a done thing now and to get the money back off the family is a no go as her other sister has cancer also now.

Sorry, i think I understand what you mean but she doesn't work at all and has no other income now apart from the ESA.

£200 a fortnight and £420 a month her rent paid. and that is all the income shes gets. so in the case of not being able to pay it back they will reduce her fortnightly money or ? I know she should call citizens or even them themselves but at the moment she can't she wants to get her head screwed on first.

thanks for replying

marliepanda · 12 July 2017 at 12:42PM

Sorry when you said she earns I assumed she has a job. I reread it and see you mean she gets her ESA every two weeks.

If she cannot pay it back the overpayment back then they will take it from her benefits.

jadc007 · 12 July 2017 at 12:44PM

hehe, that's OK.

thanks for info so far, she starting to think the worse of going to prison, they stop her benefits altogether ... so can you guarantee it will be alright to tell her shes being silly and it's not as bad as she thinks? obviously she will get the full story when shes speaks to them again

thanks again

marliepanda · 12 July 2017 at 12:48PM

No one here can guarantee anything. Technically she had fraudulently claimed benefits by not declaring her winnings. It states on all the forms you fill in that savings are looked at so she really should have realised.

Her moving it to your account may also seem as if she was concealing it. Did you not realise she was claiming benefits with almost 20k?

Anyway she needs to contact them to get the ball rolling on sorting this out. Being proactive will make her 'look better' as she is cooperating with the investigation.

calleyw · 12 July 2017 at 12:54PM

Also they may treat her as still having the money.

As the DWP have a formula they use to see how long it should last. And spending £19K in 12 months is not allowed.

You mum needs to be honest and truthful with them. And get on to the family members she helped. And explain she needs the money back asap.

Yours

Calley

jadc007 · 12 July 2017 at 12:55PM

to be honest I have never claimed benefits so wouldn't no the ins and outs of winning money and claiming so didn't think nothing of it and her putting it my account was something like i said she knows im good with maintaining rather then blowing it like she would of done lol. Yep I'll push her to get it sorted asap - I would of hoped she looked also but she did tell me she had no clue she had too but hey thanks again

PersianCatLady · 12 July 2017 at 2:01PM

Your mother committed benefit fraud, her best bet is to own up and accept her punishment.

PersianCatLady · 12 July 2017 at 2:04PM

jadc007 wrote: »

She did not declare the winnings to the social due to not knowing she had too and she put the money into my account for safe keeping and I fed her the money whenever she needed itJack.

If you gave her money whenever she needed it then it didn't matter which bank account the money was in.

Are you honestly trying to claim that you didn't put the money there in order to try and hide it?

PersianCatLady · 12 July 2017 at 2:07PM

jadc007 wrote: »

to be honest I have never claimed benefits so wouldn't no the ins and outs of winning money and claiming so didn't think nothing of it and her putting it my account was something like i said she knows im good with maintaining rather then blowing it like she would of done lol. Yep I'll push her to get it sorted asap - I would of hoped she looked also but she did tell me she had no clue she had too but hey thanks again

I don't believe that she didn't know.

Every time she filled in a form it would have told her that she needed to inform them if she came into money.

Please don't think that actually ignorant is a good defence, it is better just to admit what she did.

benefits & winning money

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