Ex partner paying off debt- is this legal?

bongbingboo

My child’s father got me into credit card/ catalogue debt in the past by using my cards for his own purchases and never paid a penny of it off. (I know, foolish of me to let him) 
we split up before our child was born and I have been paying the minimum payments for years just to keep my head above water. 

He has never supported me or our child financially and I am in receipt of child tax credit and income support.

he has recently come to his senses and has agreed to start paying off some of the debt by sporadically making payments into my account. I then make the payments to the banks/company’s directly from my account so I have proof that I am using the money to pay the debt off.

i have recently started work and sent the job centre my payslip to recalculate my income support. I am now anxious that this will open a can of worms and they will penalise me for receiving money from my child’s father. 

I haven’t considered making a change of circumstances as my financial circumstances haven’t changed at all. I’m merely trying to get myself out of increasing debt. 

Any advice welcome 

Carrot007

Maybe, I'm sure others will know better. If you reported him for fraud (as you should have, though yes it would not have been easy and yes maybe got you nowhere), you might have a better chance.

Otherwise you have accepted the debts are yours and these payments will be seen as whatever he says they are.

Pretty !!!!!!, but such is life.

[Deleted User]

You might want to get advice about making him support his child.

calcotti

Regardless of what you use the money for if you say the money is child maintenance it would fall to be ignored for benefits purposes.

calcotti

It occurs to me that if you are going to have earnings taken into account on an Income Support claim you may be better off on UC. You could ask a local advice agency to do a benefit check. Alternatively you can use online calculators https://www.gov.uk/benefits-calculators. Because it can be confusing putting the information in I would recommend using more than one calculator to confirm that you get the same answer from both.
if you did claim UC this would end your IS, Tax Credits as soon as you claim UC, any Housing Benefit runs on for 2 weeks. (From July there will be a 2 week run on for IS too.)