Death of spouse and ESA

epitome

I was a bit busy today, try coming back tomorrow and later this week.

epitome

Hi,

I found something on Pensions... what I found says:

Effect of Pension Income on ESA(C)
Certain types of pension income can be disregarded for ESA(C). These include:
* inherited pensions on the death of a member of a scheme;
* any pension payment made where the pension scheme is in deficit or has insufficient resources to meet the full pension payment, the extent of the shortfall is fully disregarded; and
* any permanent health insurance payment where the employee had contributed to the premium to the extent of more than 50%.


As you can see this is saying that your survivor pension will be diregarded for ESA C. However, what I read does not mention the same disregard for ESA IR (which is what PMLL said above). I will try to find out about ESA IR.

Have you considered Pension Credit (PC)? You should check your Pension Credit Age. You can keep an ESA C claim open with Pension Credit.

If you are not of PC age yet...have you considered ESA IR? Is there anything stopping you from ESA IR? savings over £16,000 ? I can see from your earlier reply, your Occ Pen must be about £131 a week Gross, do you know what the net amount is?
And your Inherited pension is disregarded so we can ignore that. I guess with an Occ Pen of that amount, ESA IR will not be worth claiming, unless you have a mortgage - perhaps? If you get PIP Daily Living.
Your potential for ESA IR with PIP daily, could be
73.10
36.55
15.75
62.
About 187 - 189
Your pension would be deducted in full at net so if net was 115
189 - 115 = 74 which is less than what you get on ESA Conts...so not worth it.
But if you add on a mortgage scheme at maybe 40, you might get
(189 + 40) - 115 = 114 which would be worth it.

*I have also now quickly glanced at PMLL link and V1127, it is a good link and very useful. It does say there "Will not affect ESA" which means both C & IR ESA are unaffected by survivor pensions... Although my info I got today does only say for ESA C, I'm sure now that it equally applies to ESA IR.

poety

Thank you.
That is a wonderful reply and very comprehensive. This really is very kind of you at what is a very difficult time for myself.
I'm going to answer fully later in the day when I have the information to hand - have only just seen your post.
I am very grateful

poety

Thank you again.
Given all of the variables involved, I can see why there could easily be confusion surrounding the issue I raised.
The thrust of what you are saying is that contribution-based ESA is not going to be affected by an inherited pension. Thank you so much for doing the number-crunching. I basically have an income of a little under £10k but have fully liability for Council Tax, mortgage etc etc.
, I would not be eligible for pension credit, as I’m in my fifties. Equally, I would not be considered for ESA IR related at the moment as I have some savings around the threshold. These are depleting quickly to cover my mortgage & Council Tax. So, this will change in 12 months so I will hang on to your figures. .
Thank you again. It means a great deal. I worked for 30+ years, as did my wife. So, up until our numerous cancer diagnoses we had no experience of the System.

epitome

Ok you're welcome.

The way to look at it is... Your ESA C basic is £109.65 a week, less the deduction for pension.
Basic ESA C (support Group) is made up of £73.10 + 36.55 = £109.65

The ESA C uses the Gross Pension figure, the first £85 is disregarded then 50% of anything over £85 is taken out of your ESA C.

You said your ESA C is £86 after pension. so I know that is a deduction of 109.65 - 86 = £23.65
£23.65 x 2 = £47.30
£47.30 + £85 = £132.30

So I guessed that your Gross Pension is about £132

ESA IR uses the net pension amount and the full amount of the net pension is deducted. Some peoples Gross and net are exactly the same amount. Some people, the net is less than the Gross.

Basic ESA IR (Support Group) is £73.10 + 36.55 + 15.90 = £125.55
If you apply for and are awarded PIP Daily Living, and you live alone (certain people you live with can be disregarded like children, whom you get child benefit for, or a live in carer who is funded partly by a charity and partly by you) you would get what is called Severe Disability Premium on ESA IR which is an additional £62.45

£125.55 + £62.45 = £188.00

Also on ESA IR you can get help with a mortgage, but only after waiting about 10 months from your ESA IR start date. You may already have ESA IR on your claim ... you just don't realise that you do. If this is the case then you will already have completed your 10 month waiting period. if you really don't have ESA IR then you would have to apply for it and wait the 10 months.

The mortgage help is basically a percetage of the balance of your mortgage, it used to be 3.12% but it went down recently, I think to 2.61%

So if you have a balance of £80,000 the DWP would give you £40.15 per week.

ESA IR entitled amount would be £188 + £40.15 = £228.15

From what ever ESA IR entitlement amount that you calculate you will be eligible for...you then deduct your net income.
Also from this amount any savings over £6,000 will affect it at £1 for every £250 (or part of) above £6,000.
If you have £16,000 or above you will not be entitled to any ESA IR.
As soon as your savings dip below £16,000 you can apply for ESA IR.

If your savings are £15,010 that is £9,010 over £6,000
£9010 / 250 = 36 + 1(part of) = £37

So your ESA IR (with figures above incl mortgage and SDP etc) would be £228.15 - £37 = £191.15 and then you would deduct your net income from that figure.

If the ESA C amount is more than the ESA IR amount... then you will only receive the ESA C amount.

If the ESA IR amount is more than your ESA C amount then you will only recieve the ESA IR amount

Because of the 10 month waiting period for mortgage help, you should consider applying for ESA IR as soon as your savings are below £16,000 You will probably only continue to get your ESA C amount... and you should regularly update the DWP with your current savings balance. But in the future, if you are awarded PIP Daily, and your savings deplete more, then eventually you may get more on ESA IR than you do on ESA C.... and having applied for ESA IR more than 10 months ago, you would get that ESA IR help straight away.

*Also you cannot spend your savings deliberatley with the intention of recieving more benefit in the future. Your reason for spending your savings must be because you need to* *(not actually strictly true, but this is a generalisation)

poety

I'm printing this all off for reference. I'm hoping to eventually combat my cancer and return to some normality. However, that looks unlikely for now.
Again, I can't thank you enough. This clearly took you a considerable amount of time to put together. Having this information to hand gives me some insight into how to present this to DWP. My financial situation is likely to deteriorate in the coming months and years, so the reference to IR ESA is going to be of great use - particularly the way in which mortgages are handled. Thank you ... although that doesn't seem enough in itself.

poety

Just a quick question. As my inherited pension is not taken into account for ESA under my present contribution-based award, do I need to actually declare this? Thank you.

epitome

poety wrote: »

Just a quick question. As my inherited pension is not taken into account for ESA under my present contribution-based award, do I need to actually declare this? Thank you.

I thought you already had declared it...

But strictly speaking if you think it should be disregarded in full, you would not have to declare it. You only have to declare things that will affect your benefit, if you don't know you should declare everything.

If you did not declare it and sometime in the future the DWP said "Hey we have found out you have 2 pensions, send us the details of both pensions" If it was to be disregarded in full then there would be no overpayment of benefit and therefore no penalty or recovery imposed on you.

However, if for some reason your assumption that it would be disregarded in full was wrong, then the DWP would recover an overpayment for non disclosure.

I know it is me saying it will be disregarded in full... but at the end of the day it is always best to declare everything, and be on the safe side.
I advise you to declare it to ESA and send them a Pension letter which inludes that it is an inheritance Pension, the award date & gross and net amounts as evidence.

poety

Thank you.
No I handn't formally declared, but just had a chat with DWP as to whether this type of award would reduce the amount ahead of getting the final figure from the pension people. They were obviously unable to process this without the final figure, which took a month to process. I'm now ready to declare the amount, hence I wanted to have all the information to hand - which you have supplied in full detail. Sorry to clutter up the thread. Thanks so much again.