Sorting out a widow's affairs

securityguy

Yorkshireman99 wrote: »

So would both partners have to have signed the HB claim?

Not only signed, but been an active party to.

Talk of "bedroom tax" distracts people, but it is only new for council tenants (in essence, what would be HB for private renters is subsumed into a subsidised rent for council properties, cutting out the middle man, but removing direct means testing). For people in private rented properties, as in this case, there has always been a requirement that the property is commensurate in size with the number of adults claiming benefit. You can't claim HB on a four-bedroom house if there's just one of you, and you can't claim HB on a four-bedroomed house if there's you unwaged and three of your children all of whom are earning good money. It's about the combined income of the residents, and the number of residents being right. So to claim on a property you have to show that (a) the number of people in the property is appropriate and (b) that their _combined_ income is below the relevant thresholds. There are some complex exceptions if people who are unrelated and not in relationships are jointly renting and some of them have low incomes, but that doesn't apply here.

So if a married couple are living in a property on which HB is being claimed, it requires that they both individually have savings and income below the relevant thresholds, and they will have to sign for this.

That's why the form:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/255776/hctb1_print.pdf

requires both signatures. Now there are more complex and messy scenarios one can imagine (perhaps the FIL was claiming HB on his own account pretending to be single?) but the most likely scenario is that the OP's MIL signed, but didn't really know what she was signing. That's a hard road to walk as a defence in an overpayment case.

Shelldean

OH never once signed our claim for HB. I dealt with it all and he didn't have a clue what side said or done. And there was only my signature.
To be fair the claim was organized a single claim ( I was a single parent) and he was just added at a later date. But he never once signed anything either housing benefit nor council tax related.

The only form we both signed was.child tax credits.

theoretica

This page seems very relevant and might reduce some of the guesswork. Sections 4.219 and 4.225 land 3.9 particularly.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/housing-benefit-overpayments-guide

konark

From 2009 an overpayment..• 'which was caused by a misrepresentation or a failure to disclose information, is only recoverable from any person who misrepresented or failed to disclose that information. This could be the claimant, a person to whom it was paid (landlord/agent) or both.'

Guess it all boils down to whether your MIL is classed as a claimant, if it was in FIL's sole name and she never signed anything she could be lucky.