ESA, Housing Benefit and property inheritance

Credit-Crunched

"If you sell soon after you are given the properties, there won't be any GCT to pay."

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Mojisola

Credit-Crunched wrote: »

"If you sell soon after you are given the properties, there won't be any GCT to pay."

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Your liability for GCT is based on any increase in the value between the date of death and the date you sell.

zoebuggy

Many thanks, you have given me some useful starting points and helped ease my panic (even though the may not be an easy way round my personal situation). Next step is accessing citizens advice and any other free, financial advice services (I can not afford up front private accountants fees).

rogerblack

zoebuggy wrote: »

BUT ...once I have Assets over 16K, I would loose both my Housing Benefit (£85 per week) & Rates Benefit (86%) and also my Employment Support Allowance (£100). So I would loose out financially over £12K.

I need to check do I get hit by this double benefit loss wammy... of loosing both housing benefit and ESA?

Are you claiming contributory, or income-related ESA?
Capital would only matter if it's income-related.

In principle, a properly setup trust that held the assets, and could not be drawn on by you, but would for example pay for certain living and other expenses (For example, grocery, insurance, ...) would not count as capital for benefits purposes.
This cannot be arranged directly by you, but would have to be arranged by your mother/...

RAS

A trust costs money to administer but if the trust were set up with the brother and sister as trustees, that would be a lot cheaper than letting a solicitor run it.

Having a lawyer adminster the Trust would be so expensive for so little money that I suspect the solicitor could be reported to the Law Society.

zoebuggy

I was on contributory, but govt changed that to one year only, so now it is income related ESA.

neverdespairgirl

zoebuggy wrote: »

Many thanks, you have given me some useful starting points and helped ease my panic (even though the may not be an easy way round my personal situation). Next step is accessing citizens advice and any other free, financial advice services (I can not afford up front private accountants fees).

It's not the sort of advice you'll get easily from free services. Firstly, because trusts to protect large sums of money often don't come within the remit of free services, and secondly, because (as a consequence of the first reason) there is unlikely to be any expertise in the area of trusts.

It's your mother who needs to take advice, really, as it's her property.

Brassedoff

No offence, but if you have assets, don't claim off the tax payer. At least you'll have you self respect back!

zoebuggy

Have no doubt I am a genuine claimant. I have absolutely no intention of any kind of fraud, it would make me physically sick 24/7.

The problem to me was if I received this possible asset (which would be well over £16K) I would gain an annual income of £6K ....but loose both my current ESA and my Housing Benefit etc worth 12K.

If it simply replaced one of the benefits and made me more independent, brilliant I would be happy, but instead the result is that I personally would be very very much worse off.

paddedjohn

You would still get benefits on an income of £6k