Overpaid by previous employer, should I have to pay it back ?

Austinhead

Just out of interest, and I mean this as a serious question. Given I had 2 kids birthdays and Christmas and no money to buy any presents, what would you have done?. My kids were 2, 5 and 7 at the time and all believe in father christmas. If I hadn't used some of the money paid by mistake, they literally wouldn't have had anything. Incidentally I did not spend £2000 on presents, or anywhere close.

SueC_2

Austinhead wrote: »

Just out of interest, and I mean this as a serious question. Given I had 2 kids birthdays and Christmas and no money to buy any presents, what would you have done?. My kids were 2, 5 and 7 at the time and all believe in father christmas. If I hadn't used some of the money paid by mistake, they literally wouldn't have had anything. Incidentally I did not spend £2000 on presents, or anywhere close.

I can absolutely see the temptation. But that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't your money to spend. It was made available to you, and you 'borrowed' it. Now you have to pay it back.

hermum

I only had 1 child, her birthday is just after Xmas, as those dates didn't change I had 11 1/2 months from her birthday to prepare for Xmas.
Funnily enough I think that things are actually cheaper now then when she was small, no pound shops, car boot sales, charity shops, ebay etc. I know that's off subject but with good buying throughout the year I just cannot see how you can't give your kids a good xmas & birthday without taking money that doesn't belong to you.
Kids don't need loads of money spent on them, yes most parents would like to get their kids everything that they want but you're going to be paying off last years good time until coming up to this one, so what are you going to do then?
Would I have done what you did? No.
In fact about 20 years ago I cashed a cheque in the bank & the cashier gave me my £50 & the cheque. I didn't consider keeping it, as that would have been theft. The money I had drawn out was for our summer holiday treats, saved up for half the year, on the first day of our hols I won £50. That 50 quid felt so much better than the money I could have kept.
Karma

Austinhead

hermum wrote: »

I only had 1 child, her birthday is just after Xmas, as those dates didn't change I had 11 1/2 months from her birthday to prepare for Xmas.
Funnily enough I think that things are actually cheaper now then when she was small, no pound shops, car boot sales, charity shops, ebay etc. I know that's off subject but with good buying throughout the year I just cannot see how you can't give your kids a good xmas & birthday without taking money that doesn't belong to you.
Kids don't need loads of money spent on them, yes most parents would like to get their kids everything that they want but you're going to be paying off last years good time until coming up to this one, so what are you going to do then?
Would I have done what you did? No.
In fact about 20 years ago I cashed a cheque in the bank & the cashier gave me my £50 & the cheque. I didn't consider keeping it, as that would have been theft. The money I had drawn out was for our summer holiday treats, saved up for half the year, on the first day of our hols I won £50. That 50 quid felt so much better than the money I could have kept.
Karma

I accept what your saying, and on my original post I did state that I have taken steps to stop getting myself into the same mess again - including putting money aside for birthdays and christmas.

1 small point though, 1 child = 1/3, or thereabouts of my spending costs.

I assume that what's getting everyone so wound up is that I would even question whether I should have to pay it back, and I can see peoples point, but I would have expected more people to have seen an alternative perspective. If I was still at the school and my salary suddenly doubled I would have spoken to someone immediately, but since I wasn't, and was in a difficult situation, yes I did bury my head in the sand and used what was there.

I owe what feels like a lot of money, and am simply trying to consider my options. I never said it was the right thing to do to not tell the council immediately, but it was, nevertheless, their mistake, and something I did expect to be rectified without my intervention.

RedSoleShoes

Austinhead wrote: »

Why would I lie about earning a joint income of £50k ?, I have not lied at any point during this thread ! Just because I didn't rush to contact the council about their mistake does not make me a liar. I never denied rcving the money.

Just seems a bit far-fetched that you apparently used to earn a very good joint salary and you have a degree, yet you are now so hard up that you use money that you knew wasn't yours to buy presents. You have not once said that you needed that money to buy food or any other essential items, you just keep going on about your kids "needing" presents because they believe in Father Christmas.

Of course, redundancy happens and situations that were good suddenly become very bad. But your attitude now is not the attitude of someone who is degree-educated and used to have the life you say you had. You even said that you don't believe the money was from the school because it was the council who paid you. This does not sound like the statement of someone who has a degree. In fact, you make yourself sound very naive (to put it nicely) or ignorant and lazy (to sound harsh).

Now your original post asked the question 'do I have to pay the money back?' The answer is, yes you do. Unless you decide to wait to be taken to court then you can perhaps use your "christmas/birthday present" defense and see if that works.

1984ReturnsForReal_2

LilyDeTilly wrote: »

Just seems a bit far-fetched that you apparently used to earn a very good joint salary and you have a degree, yet you are now so hard up that you use money that you knew wasn't yours to buy presents. You have not once said that you needed that money to buy food or any other essential items, you just keep going on about your kids "needing" presents because they believe in Father Christmas.

Of course, redundancy happens and situations that were good suddenly become very bad. But your attitude now is not the attitude of someone who is degree-educated and used to have the life you say you had. You even said that you don't believe the money was from the school because it was the council who paid you. This does not sound like the statement of someone who has a degree. In fact, you make yourself sound very naive (to put it nicely) or ignorant and lazy (to sound harsh).

Now your original post asked the question 'do I have to pay the money back?' The answer is, yes you do. Unless you decide to wait to be taken to court then you can perhaps use your "christmas/birthday present" defense and see if that works.

I was just about to report your post before you edited it.

hermum

Austinhead wrote: »

I accept what your saying, and on my original post I did state that I have taken steps to stop getting myself into the same mess again - including putting money aside for birthdays and christmas.

1 small point though, 1 child = 1/3, or thereabouts of my spending costs.

I assume that what's getting everyone so wound up is that I would even question whether I should have to pay it back, and I can see peoples point, but I would have expected more people to have seen an alternative perspective. If I was still at the school and my salary suddenly doubled I would have spoken to someone immediately, but since I wasn't, and was in a difficult situation, yes I did bury my head in the sand and used what was there.

I owe what feels like a lot of money, and am simply trying to consider my options. I never said it was the right thing to do to not tell the council immediately, but it was, nevertheless, their mistake, and something I did expect to be rectified without my intervention.

Yes for some things my costs would have been 1/3 of yours but rent, heat, electricity, ct (rates in those days), water would have been the same or very similar.
Everyone has the same amount of weeks in the year to put money by for presents.
Maybe this will be a good lesson to take with you & teach your children that Xmas doesn't need to be all about huge piles of expensive presents. If you're honest how many of the presents you had to buy your kids because they believe in birthday fairies & santa are they still actually playing with? Probably very few.
If you start picking up a few things a week now from poundland, the sales, car boot sales etc, at the time birthdays & xmas comes round you won't need to get much.
Most kids like the unwrapping more than what's inside, colour pencils, colouring books, games are all able now to be picked up really cheap.
If you let your kids know now that there's a limit to what anyone can afford including Santa then maybe they won't be coming on here in 25 years time with a similar tale.

SHIPSHAPE

OP, it appears to me your question was a moral one so the answer would have to be yes.

However, you can play this in another way if you are so inclined. Simply refuse to pay it back.

Your former employer may not bother to sue or they may sue but it isn't a simple case of them winning just because they paid you when they shouldn't have.

Also to consider for them is what is the prospect of them getting any money other than a few quid a month which you could argue is all you can afford.

Your biggest plus is that you do not work there anymore.

lucylucky

It is time the OP stopped clinging to stupid excuses and started to deal with the problem at hand.

Austinhead

LilyDeTilly wrote: »

Just seems a bit far-fetched that you apparently used to earn a very good joint salary and you have a degree, yet you are now so hard up that you use money that you knew wasn't yours to buy presents. You have not once said that you needed that money to buy food or any other essential items, you just keep going on about your kids "needing" presents because they believe in Father Christmas.

Of course, redundancy happens and situations that were good suddenly become very bad. But your attitude now is not the attitude of someone who is degree-educated and used to have the life you say you had. You even said that you don't believe the money was from the school because it was the council who paid you. This does not sound like the statement of someone who has a degree. In fact, you make yourself sound very naive (to put it nicely) or ignorant and lazy (to sound harsh).

Now your original post asked the question 'do I have to pay the money back?' The answer is, yes you do. Unless you decide to wait to be taken to court then you can perhaps use your "christmas/birthday present" defense and see if that works.

Both my partner and I did used to earn £50k between us. In the space of 3 years we were both made redundant, he and some other people started another business which went bankrupt, and we had another child - NOT in that order I might add. This is the reason why we are in a mess, and it's not a set of circumstances I would wish on anyone - even you !. I *could* go back to work FT earning around £35k a year, but I would be paying out massive amounts of childcare, and I wouldn't get to see my kids very much so took the decision to not go down that route at the moment.

Why you think going to university would equip me with the knowledge of the finances of a school, and the interaction between the school finances and the local council is beyond me ?