Deprivation of capital and benefits

seven-day-weekend

I personally wouldn't have thought that while you still have a job and spend your own money (especially on something as sensible as paying down the mortgage), that it would be classed as deprivation of capital - unless you have already had formal notice of short time or redundancy.

TOBRUK

ManicMum wrote: »

thanks guys. My husband has been working in permanent job for 3 1/2 years so hope that would be enough to qualify. My maiin question is whether they look retrospectively at what you have been doing with your money?

My motivation is to reduce my mortgage to make my family's situation more secure. Also, it will mean i can swap to another deal as we are currently stuck on 4.99 variable due to other lenders saying we can not afford mortgage we have. This is to lower outgoings. I do not want to have to claim benefits if possible. My intentions are honourable. It's not like I am giving my parents the money to stuff into their account so I can claim.


thanks

From what I have understood from your posts ManicMum, you don't know that your husband is going to lose his job do you - it is something that may happen? You need to change your mortgage to a more managable monthly payment so you are not overstretched, and also make an overpayment to bring this down? If this is the case I don't see a problem.

Bringing the mortgage monthly payment down from £600 to £200 a month is a very wise and reasonable move to make. If after you do this your husband becomes unemployed I can't see that they (DWP) would question this, even if they looked at your bank transactions for the past say year.

If you don't change your mortgage payments now you are overstretching yourselves even with your husband at work. Changing your mortgage is a reasonable thing to do and I can't see that if the worst happens they would look at your actions as unfavourable! They may well question it but all you need to do is tell them the truth, because as it currently stands you are finding it hard with your mortgage payment so high! You can't not act on something incase your situation changes - none of us have a crystal ball!

If your husband loses his job, you will have to wait for 13 weeks (used to be 39) before you can get help with mortgage interest payments. Even if you qualified for these payments you may find that the amount they give will not cover the payment needed.

By the way, buying a car is not looked upon as deprivation of capital, although perhaps it depends on how much you spend on a car!

bestpud

I don't know the ins and outs of it but your decisions seem reasonable to me!

If you were saying you've had money sat in a bank for a good while and now want to pay off your mortgage with it, it may be different, but selling a property and using the proceeds to reduce the mortgage on another seems something people would do.

Hopefully the assessor would use some common sense as I understand it is on a case by case basis.

SuziQ

I think paying money off your mortgage sounds like a reasonable and sensible thing,too. I have several friends who are able to pay almost double their mortgage payment each month and are doing so to get the amount down, rather than put the money into savings with a very low interest rate. I can't see that you doing it in a lump sum is any different, especially as there are no iminent signs of your husbands job going. You have also said his income has dropped-so that seems another reasonable pointer that what you are doing is ok