Letter of appeal against overpayment??

pixielee_2

can anybody help?
I'm a single mom of 3 young children after leaving my abusive ex,since then i cut my hours of work down to 19hrs, i have childcare and get help frm Tax Credits..
My problem lies with Housing and Council Tax Benefits, in 2008 my Mom passed away (i lost my Dad 10yrs earlier) my Mom owned an apartment in Spain wich she hoped to retire to one day :-(
The property was left to me and my 2 sisters, i dont get to go over often as cant afford to so i asigned my sister "power of Attorney"..The apartment was bought at 30,000 Euros,I never informed Benefits as this didnt change any incomings to my finances!! (more fool me!!)
Now an Ex friend of mine has reported me for fraud to Benefits saying i was renting this property out!! (not true)..i hav given benefits evry peice of info i hav on Spain...They hav now come back to me saying i'm not entitled to any benefit help and owe them £7,000!!!...Ive just been in to speak to them and theyve valued the property at £70,000 (which is right)...wot do i do??...I cant sell my share to my Sisters as they dont have the Money and neither of them would give me permission to sell the property!!..I'm at my wits end!!...sorry its long winded and thanx for reading :-)

fluffymovie

Hi there

This is a difficult one but basically, the property is considered as capital.

As it is not for sale, it has to be used in the calculation and so 1/3 of £70,000 is £23,333 and so puts you over the £16,000 limit for HB and CTB.

You should have told them about the property as you gained something that was worth a lot of money and so the overpayment would appear correct.

Your only option would be to force a sale of the home or assign your share over to someone else but you would need to be very careful about that. If you willingly give away money so that you can again claim HB and CTB, you will be found to have deprived yourself of capital and HB and CTB will be refused and you wont have the property either!

I would strongly advise you to seek help from the CAB or your local welfare rights unit.

With regard to the overpayment, you need to make some arrangement to pay this back at a certain amount per week,