Winter fuel allowance

zygurat789

If the elder spouce in a married couple already claims WFA of £200, what would happen if, on qualification, the youger spoce dis not apply?
Where finances are treated as one unit what is the point of both partners claiming £100 each when one could receive £200?

margaretclare

zygurat789 wrote: »

If the elder spouce in a married couple already claims WFA of £200, what would happen if, on qualification, the youger spoce dis not apply?
Where finances are treated as one unit what is the point of both partners claiming £100 each when one could receive £200?

Maybe because not everyone treats their finances as one unit. Everyone gets their state retirement pension as an individual, not as 'one unit'.

zygurat789

margaretclare wrote: »

Maybe because not everyone treats their finances as one unit. Everyone gets their state retirement pension as an individual, not as 'one unit'.

It is a given that finances are one unit.

margaretclare

zygurat789 wrote: »

It is a given that finances are one unit.

I don't understand this. Please explain. How do both spouses receive their SRP paid into their individual bank accounts, if their finances are 'one unit'? And in which name would that unit be?

xylophone

I don't understand this. Please explain. How do both spouses receive their SRP paid into their individual bank accounts, if their finances are 'one unit'? And in which name would that unit be?

They might have a joint account - a couple of my acquaintance have their state pensions ( and therefore WFA and Christmas bonus) and other income paid into their joint account.

SandraScarlett

xylophone wrote: »

They might have a joint account - a couple of my acquaintance have their state pensions ( and therefore WFA and Christmas bonus) and other income paid into their joint account.

"Might" being the operative word. We have always had our money paid into a joint account, but I know numerous couples that have "my" money and "their" money.


The OP stated: It is a given that finances are one unit. But it isn't.


xx

zygurat789

If the finances are "one unit" it means there is only one, joint bank account.
That is what it means, what else can it mean.
Anyway I have had the question answered elsewhere.
It can't be done, you HAVE to have two separate WFAs, I suppose it will keep thousands of civil servants in a job and give them totally unaffordable pensions.

p00hsticks

zygurat789 wrote: »

It can't be done, you HAVE to have two separate WFAs, I suppose it will keep thousands of civil servants in a job and give them totally unaffordable pensions.

Good grief, what on earth do you imagine is involved in paying this money that would keep "thousands of civil servants in a job" - Do you think they are personally engraving each individual bank note ?

It may have cost a bit to develop the coding originally, but I'll bet that it will now be a straight forward annual computer run against each of the eligible benefits systems and as such will take little more resource that that already involved in paying the multiple other payments the recipients will be receiving over the year.

And it will almost certainly be more efficient and less error-prone to simply pay each eligible person rather than introduce the added complexity of allowing couples the option of deciding how it should be divided up between them.

margaretclare

Ah. Now we know. It is a 'given' only if a couple have a joint account into which all their income, from all sources, is paid. But this is not necessarily the case. The DWP cannot possibly know this, since each individual is treated as just that - an individual. As we all have separate NI numbers it is possible that, even if the couple have only one - joint - bank account, the payment systems do not 'know' this. It is a long time since money has been paid out by junior clerks using pencil-and-paper. It all runs like clockwork, as pOOhsticks explains.

To illustrate, each of us receives our SRP earned from our own NI records, built up during our working lives. We each have some annuity payments, many of which were in existence before we ever met. There is no way it can be a 'given' that our finances are 'one unit'.

Dunroamin

zygurat789 wrote: »

If the finances are "one unit" it means there is only one, joint bank account.
That is what it means, what else can it mean.
Anyway I have had the question answered elsewhere.
It can't be done, you HAVE to have two separate WFAs, I suppose it will keep thousands of civil servants in a job and give them totally unaffordable pensions.

It certainly can because that's exactly what my husband and I do - it didn't seem worth the bother of changing details for the same amount of money.