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caroleak123

hope you can help i was left some money when my mum died in 08 and have been living off that with my children since but have been told if i have spent the money on the wrong things i well not get jsa, what do they mean by that i have also been told the beause i payed my criedit cards i may not get it very worried please can you help

AsknAnswer2

They are talking about 'deprivation of capital' for the purpose of income based benefit claims.

When you make a claim to income based benefit and had, had at some point a large amount of capital they will look into how the capital was spent and over what period of time.

For example if you had £30000 and spent enough to bring you under the upper capital limit in a short period of time on items that are not considered necessery or reasonable spending such as £12000 on a brand new car, £3000 on a suite, and £5000 paying off a debt which was not a priority debt, they can come to the conclusion that you have deprived yourself of the capital in order to claim benefit and treat any claim to benefit as if you still had the capital, thus disallowing you benefit.

If on the other hand, your spending was reasonable and necessery in the period of time they will not consider that you have deprived yourself and you would be entitled to income based benefits.