Benefits, redundancy, debt?

BeBetter

midnight_express wrote: »

If you pay off £13k worth of debts and claim means tests benefits six weeks later this is likely to be considered deprivation of capital. Your claim will then be treated as if you still have the money. It would be wise to hang on to most of the money until you know what your situation is going to be.

Think I've found out how to copy someone else's post, I hope this works.

I've got another question. My husband went for an interview with another company just to try to give himself more options. This company said their trial period was 6 months, but if he got the job he'd be employed with them properly from day 1, he wouldn't have to self assess during the trial period.

If he'd got that job, does that mean we'd have to hold onto the money for 6 months before spending it, just in case?

I think what I'm asking is there a cut off point where long enough had passed and you wouldn't be accused of this deprivation thing?

A lot of the jobs in my husbands industry have trial periods like this or are 3 or 6 month contract jobs. I'm just wondering when you could draw a line.

pmlindyloo

BeBetter wrote: »

Think I've found out how to copy someone else's post, I hope this works.

I've got another question. My husband went for an interview with another company just to try to give himself more options. This company said their trial period was 6 months, but if he got the job he'd be employed with them properly from day 1, he wouldn't have to self assess during the trial period.

If he'd got that job, does that mean we'd have to hold onto the money for 6 months before spending it, just in case?

I think what I'm asking is there a cut off point where long enough had passed and you wouldn't be accused of this
deprivation thing?

A lot of the jobs in my husbands industry have trial periods like this or are 3 or 6 month contract jobs. I'm just wondering when you could draw a line.

Interesting question.

Actually a propbationary period has no legal standing as far as employement goes. Your employment starts from day one and so do your employment rights.

However, having said that it doesn't really help because if the employer says that you are not meeting their requirements/performing well enough they can dismiss you and you can't claim unfair dismissal unless you have worked for them for 2 years.

Interestingly, your OH's next employers have got round this being employed issue by asking him to become self employed. Personally I have never heard of this. Are you sure that he is going to be self employed. Is going to invoice them for his work?

Anyway, back to your question. I am not sure that anyone can answer it unless they have had experience of it. I see where you are coming from.

Six weeks is not very long to wait to find out if they are going to employ him so, if it were me, I would just wait the time out.

Logically since a probation period has no legal standing you could argue that you could be dismissed from any job at any time so could not spend your life hanging on to the money while you were paying high interest rates just in case you were dismissed.

In your case your OH is going to be self employed for 6 weeks so he is not an employee at the moment so he has no security of being employed at all.

Does that make sense?

BeBetter

pmlindyloo wrote: »

Interesting question.

Actually a propbationary period has no legal standing as far as employement goes. Your employment starts from day one and so do your employment rights.

However, having said that it doesn't really help because if the employer says that you are not meeting their requirements/performing well enough they can dismiss you and you can't claim unfair dismissal unless you have worked for them for 2 years.

Interestingly, your OH's next employers have got round this being employed issue by asking him to become self employed. Personally I have never heard of this. Are you sure that he is going to be self employed. Is going to invoice them for his work?

Anyway, back to your question. I am not sure that anyone can answer it unless they have had experience of it. I see where you are coming from.

Six weeks is not very long to wait to find out if they are going to employ him so, if it were me, I would just wait the time out.

Logically since a probation period has no legal standing you could argue that you could be dismissed from any job at any time so could not spend your life hanging on to the money while you were paying high interest rates just in case you were dismissed.

In your case your OH is going to be self employed for 6 weeks so he is not an employee at the moment so he has no security of being employed at all.

Does that make sense?

He will be paid by cheque each week. He doesn't invoice them or anything, he gets told what to do work wise and uses all the work equipment, everything is exactly the same as it would be if he was employed by them, he just has to deal with his own tax.

Once the trial is up, he gets employed properly and they will give him payslips and sort the tax out.

I'm not sure why it's done like this but there are a number of firms that do this. Maybe it's just to save them admin hassle if the new employee is no use, I don't know.

pmlindyloo

BeBetter wrote: »

He will be paid by cheque each week. He doesn't invoice them or anything, he gets told what to do work wise and uses all the work equipment, everything is exactly the same as it would be if he was employed by them, he just has to deal with his own tax.

Once the trial is up, he gets employed properly and they will give him payslips and sort the tax out.

I'm not sure why it's done like this but there are a number of firms that do this. Maybe it's just to save them admin hassle if the new employee is no use, I don't know.

Don't want to put a 'spanner in the works' but I would be checking his employment status.

Have a read of this:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/employment-status/

BeBetter

pmlindyloo wrote: »

Don't want to put a 'spanner in the works' but I would be checking his employment status.

I see what you mean.

This is a fairly large company with several branches. They've been established for years and are well known in the area. Surely they must be able to do this otherwise they'd have been stopped by now.

Either way, he wont be rocking the boat about it, he needs the work.