100 year old grannioe being asked to repay £17k

pipkin71

boozzie wrote: »

My uncle pays no bills, as he only stops here to care for her monday to wednesday although he uses it for a correspondence address.

Is the uncle registered at the girlfriend's address? Are they both working and have a joint tax credit claim to show he actually lives elsewhere?

That could help your nan, if his name was registered at another property.

I think, even if your nan pays back a small amount, then, once she passes, the debt will still be there and can be claimed back off the sale of the property.

Does your uncle have any paperwork showing that he in fact bought the property?

If your family tried to put the property into the name of the uncle now, it could, I assume, be seen as deprivation of capital.

danaharrison

i cant really help other than to reiterate that age concern and the CAB should be contacted. just want to wish ur nan luck x

isplumm

Mupette wrote: »

Age Concern, social services, why are they not involved.

Definitely get age concern involved

Mark

dmg24

tcr wrote: »

I think any appeals tribunal, when faced with a gentleman in his 70's and Granny in three figures, will err on their side.

The Tribunal will err on the side of the law. If the uncle can provide no evidence of what they were told, irrespective of personal feelings the Tribunal have to make a decision based on the balance of probabilities.

If a Tribunal will choose to believe an ATOS report or the DWP in general over the word of someone with severe disability, why would/ should they be more lenient with an elderly person?

Sixer

dmg24 wrote: »

The Tribunal will err on the side of the law. If the uncle can provide no evidence of what they were told, irrespective of personal feelings the Tribunal have to make a decision based on the balance of probabilities.

If a Tribunal will choose to believe an ATOS report or the DWP in general over the word of someone with severe disability, why would/ should they be more lenient with an elderly person?

Presumably, if tcr's excerpts from the official guidance are correct - and I've no reason to think they aren't - and one of the courses of action available to the DWP is to write off the debt, any tribunal would be able/within the law to write off the debt as its judgement?

tcr_3

dmg24 wrote: »

The Tribunal will err on the side of the law. If the uncle can provide no evidence of what they were told, irrespective of personal feelings the Tribunal have to make a decision based on the balance of probabilities.

If a Tribunal will choose to believe an ATOS report or the DWP in general over the word of someone with severe disability, why would/ should they be more lenient with an elderly person?

There's every chance the DWP will have destroyed their side of the conversation too, in accordance with normal data retention policies.

That's not Granny's fault.

OP, don't listen to these people who tell you to pay up (some of you regulars should be ashamed of yourselves, giving duff advice or deliberately withholding info about appeal rights etc ... if you can no longer advise people here without a Daily Mail spin then go take a break).

Follow the advice of others, speak to Age Concern, the CAB or Welfare Rights and get Granny to complete a GL24 appeal form, appeal on the grounds that a DWP staff member misinformed the Uncle & that any overpayment should be treated as an official error. Also dispute how the overpayment was calculated & query why it goes so far back if so much of Granny's records have been binned.

kev.s

dmg24 wrote: »

Sounds like your uncle has the life of riley!

SPONGER YOU MEAN:eek:

danaharrison

kev.s wrote: »

SPONGER YOU MEAN:eek:

thats a little harsh isnt it, he is 70 years of age and giving 24hr care 3 days a week. sounds like a flamin good son to me

Mad_Kitty_Kat

I use to help take for my nana, there were three of us in a rota, taking it in turns to sleep at nana's house that she owned, she got the benefits you mention. SS were involved and she did not get her benefits cut as there is a difference between staying at a house and taking care of someone and actually living at an address. We all had different homes though.

I would appeal getting help from the various resources mentioned. Pointing out that your uncle doesn't have a bed or store his things there just that his post is delivered for convenience to this address. The problem may be if your uncles girlfriend is claiming benefits then she might be in trouble if they access him as living at that address. Perhaps in future your uncle should get a PO box.

Good luck

anmarj

tcr wrote: »

The OP states that the Uncle was informed by a DWP staff member that his moving in with Granny wouldn't affect her benefits. That's obviously incorrect advice. Which means any overpayment which follows as a result of bad advice can be classed as an "official error" and written off.

Secondly, it's routine for DWP to weed out & destroy customer correspondence after 18 months. So I doubt very much they can legitimately calculate & recover any overpayment prior to August 2009 ... because apart from the initial claim form, they'll have destroyed most if not all of the correspondence/notes held on file.

Thirdly, they've got the discretion to write off the overpayment altogether on the grounds of age & health considerations.

I know you might not appreciate that answer, Mister Taxpayer, but Granny has got good grounds to appeal.

for Pension credit the information does not get weeded out, have seen casepapers going back years, I know SP do that.

I note that the op states that her nan only has SP and PC, if she qualified for SDP then she must have either DLA/AA, it maybe that they have gone on the phone and said all she gets is SP and PC then they are going to get the answer it does not effect the PC, if not all of the correct info was supplied then of course they are going to get an incorrect answer, it happens now, and the telephony agent has to really, at times, probe to find out what the customer is actually getting or saying.. perfect example my call the other day, customer advised spouse had received carers allowance, and was worried about pension credit, on investigation they had not been awarded carers it was attendance allowance. the cusotmer thought that was carers until I got them to look at the paperwork, especially when they quoted the amount awarded was not carers amount. Questions can only be answered on what you are provided with. Half the people think when the AA/dla been removed because of a long stay in hospital they think the state pension has gone down cause they don't realise that the AA/DLA is paid with SP. I still getting calls from people who have been hold by hospital staff that SP gets downrated after 6 weeks!

The OP can see if the call can be traced and listened to.