Child’s DLA and IVA

sassyk1976

Can anyone help with advice, I am in IVA with payplan and am about to make claim for DLA for my son, I understand I have to declare this as income but am worried payplan will ask for extra money as they will say I have been managing so far but I feel this money is for my son as I will be claiming on his behalf. Any advice? 

calcotti

Why don't you speak to Payplan for advice.

Galloglass

I would have thought that DLA or even PIP would be ring fenced as it is an amount to cope with the extra costs of a caring for the child/person. I would suggest (unless someone wants to correct me) that there should be provision in the expenditure column for a 100% netting-off of the DLA award. 

Alice_Holt

You need to discuss your disability expenses in detail with your Insolvency Practitioner. This is not like discussing your debts at a Citizens Advice Bureau – the person you are talking to at the IVA firm is unlikely to know much about benefits or disabilities – they aren’t going to prompt you for things you might have forgotten because they don’t know enough about the area.

Too many IPs seem to start off by assuming that the standard guidelines for expenditure should apply to all families. It may help if you have a think about your additional costs before your phone call and make some notes to work though.

You need to think about things which you and your family do that wouldn’t be needed if it weren’t for the disability i.e:

• Your IP may not think that you need to take your autistic son swimming several times a week, but you know that being in the water is relaxing for him and lets him work out the stress that being at school tends to induce.

Although there are standard guidelines for acceptable expenses in an IVA,  there is no reason why your expenses can’t be higher than the guidelines and additional expenses can be included if there is a good reason for them.

If you feel you are being pushed to pay more than you think you can afford, then don’t feel you have to agree because the IVA payments will be lower than those on your debts. Five years is a very long while to live on an inadequate amount of money and you may find your expenses increase during the term if the condition gets worse and as the children get older. IVA payments are not very flexible, you can’t assume they will be decreased later if your expenses go up.

Alsio try contacting StepChange and talking to them about.