DWP Investigation after death

Mojisola

It's hard enough to cope with a parent's death - and an untimely one makes it worse - but your sister and the solicitor are not helping!

The hospital is likely to make any investigation as difficult as possible so the legal side will get dragged out as well.

It's so rotten for you. Do make sure you have enough support for what's probably going to be a frustrating, long, painful process. It's worth contacting a group like Cruse - https://www.crusebereavementcare.org.uk/ - who will have experience of what you're going through and should be able to help.

McKneff

If she worked for him without pay, this was probably done willingly and for some reason was done maybe as a favour, without thought of reward.

The fact that he was now paying £300 a month would not be seen as wages, othewise she would and should have been paid at the time.

The DWP would look on this as incomeie ie a monthly gift now and she was possibly not entitled (and she was probably not aware or all of this) to pension credit or any means tested benefits that she may have claimed because of this.
If they do take any money back it wouldnt be more than they should so her estate will be back to what it would have been at the time of her death, if you see what i mean. Obviously, I dont know your mum but she may be mortified that she has left you to deal wth all of this.

clemmatis

my condolences, cjellwood. I do know a lot of what you're going through (including the hospital problem). I was my mother's named executor and could not afford to pay a solicitor so handled it all myself, and I got very stressed in case I'd answered something incorrectly (I was so upset, I misread the questions about relatives) or they did not believe the estate was under the inheritance tax limit. In the event the probate office people were kind and helpful.

If cruse can't help, Age Concern might be able to.

cjellwood

can you imagine how shocked I was when she told me about her working for a guy that only 'promised' to pay her for 8 months work when the company recovered from its slump :mad:

She had worked for him 2 years prior to this happening but still it was a very odd thing to do. I just hope she made a correct declaration when applying for the credits. She definately had no savings.

It can only be seen as an irony that she died a year after recieving her pension which I remember her going to great lengths to top up a few years prior to retiring. If the future could be told then she would have been better off taking the lump sum as mentioned previously, but I dont know how that works.

Chris

Mojisola

Chris - what would make all this very difficult for me would be the lack of control over anything. I would feel helpless and aimless and would need to find something constructive to do and you sound as if you're floundering, too. If you think it would help you, would your sister let you be involved in the work required to sort out probate? There's always a lot of routine stuff to do and, if you explain that you're not trying to take over but need something constructive to do, she may be amenable.

cjellwood

Probate is all done and dusted as of last week. It seems that I need to wait for the outcome of the DWP snooping then look at the legal options after that time.

Chris