Self employed sickness benefits

Sue11

Hi everyone
The guy that my husband works for is self employed he has broken his hip skiing and will be off work for several months. He has two small children and his wife works part time and earns just enough to pay the mortgage. He says he he has been told he cannot claim for for anything to help them out as he has a small amount of savings and owns his own house. I cannot believe this is correct, would anyone know the probabilites of this?

bigboybrother

Sue11 wrote: »

Hi everyone
The guy that my husband works for is self employed he has broken his hip skiing and will be off work for several months. He has two small children and his wife works part time and earns just enough to pay the mortgage. He says he he has been told he cannot claim for for anything to help them out as he has a small amount of savings and owns his own house. I cannot believe this is correct, would anyone know the probabilites of this?

Most unlikely that he will be able to claim any contribution based benefit as he will not have paid enough/correct NIC stamp.

He can claim ESA Income based but as he has been told he can't have it, the presumption is that the household income is too high to qualify and/or the household has savings in excess of £6000.

Either way the family unit will be expected to live on her wages topped up by drawing on their savings and using that.

rogerblack

Owning a house will not generally affect benefits one way or the other - as long as you live in it.

bigboybrother

rogerblack wrote: »

Owning a house will not generally affect benefits one way or the other - as long as you live in it.

I agree, but I would think that the problem lies with a reasonable household income (wife) and/or substantial savings (in excess of £6000).

ERICS_MUM

A couple of self-employed friends of mine have insurance to cover for when they are ill/injured and unable to work. They have also saved to ensure they have a "contingency fund" for emergencies.

I'm surprised this man decided to go skiing when he doesn't seem to have either of these.

Sorry, this isn't very helpful for the current situation but perhaps he needs to review his priorities once he's back on his feet, which I hope will be soon.

I do hope your husband isn't going to be affected by this - can his boss still afford to pay him ?

Linda xx

pmlindyloo

As long as he has paid class 2 NI contributions for the last couple of years then he will be entitled to claim contribution based ESA. (not means tested so wil not tak into account any savings - house not counted)

He needs to check that he has no income protection cover (people often forget that they have taken it out)

When he claims contribution based ESA he can ask to be assessed for income based ESA too as a joint claim (with housing costs) This is means tested so any savings/income taken into account.

It is likely that he would not be entitled to this because of his wife working but it will depend on her earnings and their savings.

He needs to inform his mortgage company of his present situation and ask if they can give him a payment holiday or reduced payments until he is back in work - they can be very helpful but he needs to ask what help they can give.

Ditto with any creditors - inform them of the situation. Most will be willing to help.

The main priority is food but hopefully with the wife's earnings, child benefit, tax credits, help from family they will be able to manage.

They need to get their expenditure down to the bare minimum until he is 'back on his feet' (no pun intended)