Tax credit payback

deltaz03

Need some advice please...
My mum and her husband seperated last Janurary, although tax credits wasnt the first thing on her mind, I told her to ring them as she should be able to claim as a single parent, which she did around March 10. The tax credits then paid her over £1000 in April due to the change in her circumstances, only to write to her in July asking for over £700 back. She rang them and they said that as her and her husband are seperated she was only liable to pay half.

I wrote her an appeal letter explaining the situation and asking why are they giving her money in 1 hand and then asking for the majority back a couple of months later. They have just wrote back at the end of January saying they are not upholding her appeal and are demanding the entire £700+ back and that this is their final decision and we can not appeal.

Please could someone help, is there anywhere she can go to get some more advice, or does she just pay it back? Thanks in advance.

jjj1980

It sounds like the £700 they are requesting be paid back are the payments made under the joint claim from January till March.

The £1000 sum she received will be backdated payments under her single claim for January to march, at which point she would then have been receiving weekly payments.

This is quite normal where there has been a change from joint to single claims with a delay in notifying TCs. I totally understand the delay, it took me the same sort of time to tell them when me and my ex split up as I had that much on my mind I just totally forgot.

TCs will say that as it was a joint claim, both parties are jointly and severally liable for the repayment. It does depend whether they both had access to the money during the overpaid period though as to who should pay it back.