benefits after separation

theworkingman

Unfortunately my partner and I are separating and we're pretty frazzled trying to get things organised. I am hoping someone can advise what will happen to our tax credit claim.

I am self-employed full time, OH is unemployed, we have one young child. We are receiving maximum child tax credit and working tax credit based on joint estimated earnings in 2014/15 being £2000 (new business launched recently yet to take off). Joint earnings in 2013/14 tax year were £20000.

I will be moving out and my partner and child will remain in our current rented property. It's my understanding that we will need to stop the current claim and then submit 2 separate claims to the tax credit people BUT

Do we both have to call together to end the current tax credit claim? Or can one of us do this / does it require us to both call separately?

Do we have to wait until I am physically living elsewhere or can I give advance notice once I have a moving-out date?

Is it likely that my partner's tax credit payments will stop for an extended period between the joint claim ending and my partner's individual claim for child tax credit being submitted and processed?

I understand that any of my own future earnings after we separate will not have any impact on my partner’s future entitlement to tax credits/income support/housing benefit etc (please tell me if I am wrong?) but hypothetically if my earnings between now>April 2015 increase to £20k will this create any overpayment in our joint tax credit claim from April 2014>now? Or does any income I earn individually during the remainder of this tax year only impact on my own individual future claim?

epitome

No answer to your tax credit question,... sorry.

But if the child is under 5 and she has less than £6,000 / £16,000 in savings she can claim Income Support now, whilst you are still living under the same roof. As long as you are both living seperate lives and not supporting each other, She needs to say she is single on her claim application and date of seperation., and that you live in the same house.

Having joint bank accounts would complicate the claim so best to
seperate the finances before she claims.

Making the claim is one thing, but getting it allowed and into payment is quite another thing, the DWP may decide not to accept that she is to be treated as living alone.. whilst you are still living there.

theworkingman

Thanks epitome, I appreciate your advice. I will ask my OH to look in to the income support side of things. I suspect this will have to wait until we separate physically because we are in essence still sharing all the household duties and living together as a couple, only without the fun bits :-)

Thank you kindly blondebubbles. Just to clarify - I hope you don't mind me giving a hypothetical example - let's say our joint tax credit claim runs from 6th April to 31st October 2014 and was based on estimated £2000 earnings for the whole tax year. Our tax credit award is £7235 annually.

If I then earn £20k after we separate (from 1st Nov 2014 to 5th April 2015) does all of this £20k get treated as income during the joint claim period? i.e. over 6 months this means it's treated as an equivalent annual income of around £40k and will lead to all of the tax credits being repaid?

Or alternatively will a pro-rata portion of the £20k be included in the joint claim calculation (6 months' = £10k) and the rest included in my own future single claim calculation?

Either way do you know how an overpayment in this situation would be divided up between us both? Would it rely on us coming to an amicable agreement or is there a specific process that the tax credit people would follow?

Sorry to ask so many daft questions. I really can't find the answers to these anywhere and we're just trying to budget as best we can - if you are aware of any publicly-available links to official guidelines on this topic I would delighted if you could share. Thanks very much

theworkingman

Thanks blondebubbles...income from Apr>Nov would be £0

theworkingman

It surprises me that this hypothetical £20k wouldn't be apportioned between the two periods somehow.

Just seems a little strange that an ex-partner could feasibly be held responsible for repaying half of an overpayment incurred solely by someone else months after separating.

Thanks for the advice though, much appreciated.

DigForVictory

Tax credits are weird.

Let 'em know you're seperated as of X date & ask what next. As yes, you *will* be both due for any overpayment. Sooner you can stop it happening the better. Far as I know, eitherof you can make that call - just try to agree on a date 'for tax purposes'?

Herself can whop in a claim tomorrow and they *may* backdate it to the date of seperation.
She needs to call them up too & get a claim rolling so that her Tax Credits claim starts pronto.

Yours will be trickier even if you are about to become the main parent/caregiver. Assumptions get made, y'know? Queries like who is the lead contact for school/who does the majority of the laundry/under whose roof do offspring sleep & how many nights a month are all standard questions to clarify that if needed but here's hoping amidst all the complexities you don't have that aspect.

All the best in a rough situation & you'll be amazed how much you can do by phone. (Although every new claim has to have a bit of paper somewhere, the Job Centre can do quite a bit of that.)

theworkingman

Thanks for the kind words DigForVictory

Fingers crossed my OH doesn't land a new job otherwise I might have a nasty bill of my own to deal with come tax credit review time next year! :-)

DigForVictory

No contention Tax Credits are an HMRC thing, but for those entirely on benefits, I believe Job Centres help with the form filling.
As for OH's income, once the Tax Credits system accepts you as two separate claims, then you are not responsible for their overpayment. While HMRC thinks you are one household however - you are both responsible. Give them a call with all reasonable speed, & good luck going forwards.

theworkingman

I originally thought exactly as you stated DigForVictory - that once we are on separate tax credit claims any future changes in circumstances would have no impact on the other party.

However, blondebubbles is adamant that this is not the case and that if my income increases after we separate then this would lead to my OH being required to repay an overpayment in relation to the joint claim, which by then will have been long-closed. I can only assume this works both ways so I would be equally responsible for 50% of an overpayment incurred by my OH post-separation.