mum died now I have letter from recovery of estates

motherofstudents

I hope someone can help me as I feel quite sick at the moment. My mum died 4 weeks ago and I have sent off the probate forms and got the grant of representation. Today I received a letter from the DWP Recovery from Estates Debt Management, saying that they had been notified by the Probate Registry. My mum was in receipt of pension credit of £49 per week, State pension, Attendance allowance and an occupational pension from my late father. I know that when she started to claim these benefits, someone came to the house from DWP and looked at her bank statements. I also know she would not have done anything wrong. I am wondering if these letters go out routinely or is it because the amount on the probate form was something like £115k including her home which we guessed was worth £90k. She has some shares which my dad got years ago when BT was privatised and she didn't have a clue about them, the certificate was just in an old briefcase. The letter says that they may claim any overpayment from the estate. Can anyone please tell me if I am in trouble because of this ? It is upsetting because my mum was so honest and would be devastated to know what has happened. It says not to distribute the estate but I have already done so with the cash - £2000 which she owed has been paid back, the funeral nearly £4000 and the remainder of the cash split between me and my brother. It is such a difficult time that to have received this letter has really set me back. Can anyone explain what is likely to happen. I should have said too that she got all her council tax paid.

nannytone_2

you say you valued her property at 90k and her total estate was 115k.
that means she had 25k in other assets?
I think that amount is too high to be able to claim means tested benefit ( pension credit)
you won't get in trouble, but you will be expected to re pay any amount that shouldnt have been claimed, so don't spend what you have left.........and get the money back from your brother!

no one will assumme your mum wasn't honest. older people often only think of assets as being 'cash' so dont worry too much about it.

MissMoneypenny

Quite a lot of posts appear on here with the same problem.

Get the money back from your brother and hold onto the 19k cash, until you hear about the amount of overpayments they may want back.

* crossed post with nannytone.

bunny999

She won't have been entitled to any means tested benefits. You will need to repay the overpayments to the DWP and the council. All debts have first claim on the estate and should have been paid before the estate was distributed.

dseventy

As past posters have said, you need to retain the money from the estate until the debt to the DWP (government -> taxpayers) is settled.

Do not distribute the estate, or monies until the DWP issue is settled. If you have already done this, get it back.

D70

motherofstudents

thank you for the replies. It was just a shock to get that letter. Does anyone know how far back this will go or how it will be worked out as I am sure it dates back to around the time my dad died so about 8 years. Will it be all the council tax and all the tax credits for that period. I'm not sure if she got the tax credits then but pretty sure it was council tax all paid. It is strange because she had to pay towards my dad's care so I don't know if that was a different threshold. All I can do is fill in the form and send it back but it is quite worrying as I thought everything had been sorted out.

Whiteknight

motherofstudents wrote: »

I hope someone can help me as I feel quite sick at the moment. My mum died 4 weeks ago and I have sent off the probate forms and got the grant of representation. Today I received a letter from the DWP Recovery from Estates Debt Management, saying that they had been notified by the Probate Registry. My mum was in receipt of pension credit of £49 per week, State pension, Attendance allowance and an occupational pension from my late father. I know that when she started to claim these benefits, someone came to the house from DWP and looked at her bank statements. I also know she would not have done anything wrong. I am wondering if these letters go out routinely or is it because the amount on the probate form was something like £115k including her home which we guessed was worth £90k. She has some shares which my dad got years ago when BT was privatised and she didn't have a clue about them, the certificate was just in an old briefcase. The letter says that they may claim any overpayment from the estate. Can anyone please tell me if I am in trouble because of this ? It is upsetting because my mum was so honest and would be devastated to know what has happened. It says not to distribute the estate but I have already done so with the cash - £2000 which she owed has been paid back, the funeral nearly £4000 and the remainder of the cash split between me and my brother. It is such a difficult time that to have received this letter has really set me back. Can anyone explain what is likely to happen. I should have said too that she got all her council tax paid.

Try not to worry about it at the moment, I have known people get Pension Credit and have loads of money sitting in bank accounts. You mention she was getting Attendance Allowance, as long as she lived alone and no one got Carers Allowance for her the amount of Pension Credit she would have been entitled to would have increased.

This of course depending on the amount of her State Pension, occupational pension and savings. If you can find an entitlement letter for the Pension Credit it might give you some details regarding what the DWP thought her savings were (you mentioned some shares that she did not know about so it is possible that the value of these shares were never disclosed)

Oldernotwiser

Have the shares been sold yet?

motherofstudents

Thanks whiteknight. I am a worrier I'm afraid but also feeling a bit vulnerable at the moment. I know she wouldn't have deliberately hidden anything - typical older generation. She lived alone, no one got carers allowance as I looked after her. I think the occupational pension was £115 per month. I don't know the amount of state pension but would imagine it was just the full pension. I will try to find an entitlement letter. The amount left after the flat was not £25k, it was about £17k plus some shares and I don't know how long she had that amount.

No, shares not sold yet but I sent a form off to transfer them to us.

motherofstudents

Just wanted to update this. I know it has been a while, July last year but I wanted to let the people who replied know the outcome and also may help anyone in the future who may have a similar situation.

It has been a very hard year, grieving for my mum and also trying to get all the information required by the DWP. The CAB have been helpful but most of the writing letters, ringing etc has been down to me.

Anyway the information is that for 2011, someone on Retirement Pension and Attendance Allowance can have approx £27000 in savings and still get £50 per week pension credit. You can have £10000 savings before it will affect pension credit and over that they say for every £500 in savings they count £1 in income.

Go back to 2009 and the amount was £6000. They also use the 'diminishing capital calculation' which means they start with the full amount of savings and then reduce it by the amount the person would be assumed to have needed to withdraw if they were not receiving pension credit.

I hope that makes sense. So we only have a small amount to repay and I think it could have been worse. The cash part of the estate has been given to the grandchildren to help with house deposits etc. We still have the shares but not sure whether it would be sensible to sell them right now as they have dropped like a stone. The flat we are going to let, so it looks like we will just repay it from our own funds.

I do accept that there has been an overpayment and so we will pay it back. To those people complaining that it should be paid back to the taxpayer, don't you think that my parents paid tax all their lives ? My mum saved the taxpayer money by looking after my dad for years when he had dementia. When she finally gave in and let him go into a care home, she paid. There is a huge amount of money in unclaimed benefits, and I won't go into tax avoidance/evasion.

So, I'm just glad it's over. Hope this helps anyone who faces the same thing. Apparently it happens quite a lot when older people just don't understand what information they are being asked for.

It upsets me when I think how my mum thought about getting some new curtains but decided not to as they were a bit too expensive. She didn't know about the shares and investments that my dad made before he was ill. Like a lot of women of that generation, she wasn't even on the mortgage.

lilmissbetty

motherofstudents wrote: »

Just wanted to update this. I know it has been a while, July last year but I wanted to let the people who replied know the outcome and also may help anyone in the future who may have a similar situation.

It has been a very hard year, grieving for my mum and also trying to get all the information required by the DWP. The CAB have been helpful but most of the writing letters, ringing etc has been down to me.

Anyway the information is that for 2011, someone on Retirement Pension and Attendance Allowance can have approx £27000 in savings and still get £50 per week pension credit. You can have £10000 savings before it will affect pension credit and over that they say for every £500 in savings they count £1 in income.

Go back to 2009 and the amount was £6000. They also use the 'diminishing capital calculation' which means they start with the full amount of savings and then reduce it by the amount the person would be assumed to have needed to withdraw if they were not receiving pension credit.

I hope that makes sense. So we only have a small amount to repay and I think it could have been worse. The cash part of the estate has been given to the grandchildren to help with house deposits etc. We still have the shares but not sure whether it would be sensible to sell them right now as they have dropped like a stone. The flat we are going to let, so it looks like we will just repay it from our own funds.

I do accept that there has been an overpayment and so we will pay it back. To those people complaining that it should be paid back to the taxpayer, don't you think that my parents paid tax all their lives ? My mum saved the taxpayer money by looking after my dad for years when he had dementia. When she finally gave in and let him go into a care home, she paid. There is a huge amount of money in unclaimed benefits, and I won't go into tax avoidance/evasion.

So, I'm just glad it's over. Hope this helps anyone who faces the same thing. Apparently it happens quite a lot when older people just don't understand what information they are being asked for.

It upsets me when I think how my mum thought about getting some new curtains but decided not to as they were a bit too expensive. She didn't know about the shares and investments that my dad made before he was ill. Like a lot of women of that generation, she wasn't even on the mortgage.

Hi, read this post with great interest. Firstly please accept my condolences on your loss.
We are at the beginning stages of receiving the letter from dwp. Could you let us know how long it took in your situation, for the outcome as our situation is very similar, we do know that my Grandad had an indefinate period of assessment, He passed away aug 2011 but my mum has only just been able to bring herself to apply for probate, and that is only because she needs to get the house transferred to her name for insurance purposes. It is not being sold as i am now living there with my family. We would appreciate it if you could let us know what to expect and how long it took. My mum just started to recover from her fathers death, now its raking it all back up again.
Thanks.