Housing Benefit Worry

brightonqueen

Hi all,

I will try to keep this as short as possible...

I have been privately renting my flat for 15 months, with my toddler son, (& my partner who moved in 3 months ago). Before i moved in i had £32K savings, & my son had £11K after a will settlement. I do not work, & to date my only income is Child Benefit & Child Tax Credit.

I am aware you cannot claim HB at all if you have capital of over £16K, & any savings over £6K affect the amount of benefit you may be entitled to.

I therefore have been using my own savings for day to day living costs. By August last year my savings had diminished to £15K (rent & bills per month are £1,600; plus i had to fully furnish the flat on moving in as i previously lived with my mother & had nothing, this totalled around £5K).

So i applied for HB for the first time. I was told i could not claim anything, as i had too much savings (they lumped my own money with my son's, even though i had a solicitors letter to prove where a large part of his money came from). I was told by a HB officer to move his money to an account which was in his name & couldn't be touched by anyone else & with me as a trustee, so it would be seen as 'his money'. After a lot of hunting around i finally found something suitable.

In the mean time, my partner moved in (he has no savings, & works full time but on a very low wage.) we have since applied a second time for HB in December last year, when my savings were down to £4K.

Our claim is still being processed, as they wrote to ask us for statements dating back to before i moved into the flat (& over a year before our application.)
The problem i am forseeing (as i am a worrier!!) is that back then i did have another account which shows up on my current bank account statements from that period. I did not 'declare' this account on the application form, as it was closed by the time of me applying (the money in this account used to live off!). I do still have the paperwork from this account to show when it was closed etc.

My worry is that they will think i am trying to con the system into getting benefits by 'hiding' money in other accounts. In reality, i have been honest by using my savings to live off before applying for HB now i really need it. All the money i have spent can be accounted for & justified- i have not certainly not squandered the money to try & 'get rid' of it.

I just wondered if anyone had a similar experience, or knew what might happen to our claim. really hope this gets resolved asap, as i have only enough to pay the next months rent & bills (my partners wage after tax barely covers rent & coucil tax, not to mention all the other costs...)

Sorry to ramble on, thanks for taking time to read :eek:

eyeinthesky

If you can account for all your spending I would think you would be ok, but you have spent £11k between august and december. This may be a difficult sum to explain away.

karenx

Do you have receipts for EVERYTHING?

Oldernotwiser

eyeinthesky wrote: »

If you can account for all your spending I would think you would be ok, but you have spent £11k between august and december. This may be a difficult sum to explain away.

This seems to me to be the crucial point and you're certainly going to be asked to explain it. You may also have problems with spending £5,000 on furnishings.

brightonqueen

August- December is 5x £1,600 living costs = £8,000.
I also had problems with my car so bought a secondhand one £1,500, plus insurance,tax,mot etc.
I admit it does sound like a lot of money to have got through within that time, & although i do not have receipts for what has been spent (karenx), everything has come out via direct debit or been put onto my card, hence my bank statements show exactly what money has gone where. Plus i paid the money to furnish the flat over a year before my most recent claim, so do you still think they would take that into consideration!?
Thanks for your comments, it will prepare me for what they will likely be asking me to prove!!

Macro_3

So i applied for HB for the first time. I was told i could not claim anything, as i had too much savings (they lumped my own money with my son's, even though i had a solicitors letter to prove where a large part of his money came from). I was told by a HB officer to move his money to an account which was in his name & couldn't be touched by anyone else & with me as a trustee, so it would be seen as 'his money'. After a lot of hunting around i finally found something suitable.

I'd be concerned by this - you applied for HB, were refused on the basis that you had more than 16k in total as the money of your sons was treated as yours. You then transferred it into a trust in your sons name, and it does appear that the intention was to have the money viewed as 'his' rather than yours in order to increase entitlement to benefit. They may view this transfer of this money as deprivation.

Sixer

Macro wrote: »

I'd be concerned by this - you applied for HB, were refused on the basis that you had more than 16k in total as the money of your sons was treated as yours. You then transferred it into a trust in your sons name, and it does appear that the intention was to have the money viewed as 'his' rather than yours in order to increase entitlement to benefit. They may view this transfer of this money as deprivation.

I don't see how, if the son was left the money in a will and the mother has paperwork to prove that? The issue with the son's money, surely, was that she had put it into an account to which she had access? This is a common issue in differentiating whose money is whose and what counts as what for both tax and benefits, especially when children are small - it doesn't cross a parent's mind that the money should go into an account the child itself operates (eg Post Office 7+ accounts) or the operator should be a grandparent or aunt or other trusted adult.

Having said that, I am unsure about the limits for HB/LHA and a dependant's capital. I'm sure someone will be along to explain that.

brightonqueen

Sixer wrote: »

I don't see how, if the son was left the money in a will and the mother has paperwork to prove that? The issue with the son's money, surely, was that she had put it into an account to which she had access? This is a common issue in differentiating whose money is whose and what counts as what for both tax and benefits, especially when children are small - it doesn't cross a parent's mind that the money should go into an account the child itself operates (eg Post Office 7+ accounts) or the operator should be a grandparent or aunt or other trusted adult.


This is it exactly...When i recieved the cheque for his inheritance i paid it into what i thought was 'his account', but it was only when i later applied for HB that i was informed that the account (along with most other accounts for children under 7) was actually in my name, with him just as a named person on the account.
That is when the HB staff member i spoke to told me to transfer it to an account that would be just in his name.
They do have the solicitors letter to show the money was left to him so this is not the main worry.

viktory

*Sits firmly on hands*

Oldernotwiser

brightonqueen wrote: »

August- December is 5x £1,600 living costs = £8,000.
!

But you were also receiving CB and CTC so you seem to have been living on an income far in excess of what would be considered normal for someone living on benefits.

brightonqueen

Yes & the CB & CTC are spent on my sons needs, ie. nappies, wipes, clothes etc, plus preparing for a new baby due in a few months (as the grants previously available to most pregnant mothers are being cut down/stopped by this government.)
What it comes down to is if they decide overall that i have spent my savings 'in excess' of my needs, will they refuse the HB completely?!