Attendance Allowance - DWP may be looking for money 18 months after my mum passed away

Cugel_the_notsoclever

My mother died at the end of 2018. I informed her bank, Social Services and pension provider etc within the next few days and as her executor put her estate through probate, and submitted the financial details to HMRC over the next few months. Last week I received a letter from the DWP about attendance allowance which appears to have been paid to her during the last 18 months of her life.  The letter said: We have changed the decision about Attendance Allowance because you have been in a care home. We cannot pay you Attendance Allowance from 31/07/17 because you have been in hospital and then a care home for more than 28 days and we cannot pay Attendance Allowance which is paid for either fully or partly from public or local funds – for example from your local or health authority. 

My mother went into hospital in July 2017 due to her dementia worsening, and she was there for several weeks before going into a nursing home in August 2017 where she remained until she died. When she left the hospital, a staff member told me that as a matter of course, they would apply to the local authority on her behalf for her care to be funded due to her dementia and inability to walk or care for herself. The local authority contacted me soon after to say that her care would be fully funded. During this time, I was unaware that my mother was also receiving attendance allowance. I have talked to other family members about this and they were surprised about this too, I think that we had all been under the impression that she did not qualify for benefits like this as she had some savings. Prior to going into hospital, she had been in a residential care home for just over a year, so it might have been during that time.

What the DWP is doing is probably all perfectly correct, but it has come as a bolt out of the blue and it seems surprising that they didn't realise the benefit was being paid incorrectly in the first place while my mother was in the nursing home, and also that they have waited until 18 months after her death to change their decision. The letter says that I have a month to contest the decision, but apart from wondering why they failed to notice in the first place and then waited 18 months to change their decision, I am not sure there is much more I can think of.  I was wondering if anyone else might have had a similar experience or more knowledge about this area than me?

I will write to the DWP and ask for details of the payments that were made, who submitted the claim for attendance allowance in the first place, and for details of the bank account that the payments were made to (just to check that it was paid into her account, and not directly to the care home). Apart from this, I can’t think that there is a lot more I can do. They haven't said that they want the money back yet, but the letter does say that they will write to me separately about the money that has been paid incorrectly. It makes me wonder at what point I will be able to think that all her affairs have been settled. 

[Deleted User]

It looks like whoever did the probate notified HMRC as they should but that no one notified the DWP (which was the first thing we did when dad died), I have this horrible feeling that you might get landed with a request for repayment, which could be anything from £4000 to £7000. hope not.

Cugel_the_notsoclever

She died on a Sunday and I managed to get an appointment at her bank to notify them and go through her accounts on the Wednesday and they closed her deposit and current accounts then. I then rang the DWP after that to notify them as well as another pension provider which she had, and she also had a couple of income-paying investments and I also contacted them to try and make sure that no one made any further payments once her bank accounts were closed. Then on the Thursday after she died, I went to register her death and used the Tell Us Once service. So, the DWP should have known about her death. I can mention this in my letter when I write to them. I can only think that it has taken them so long to get in touch with me because of bureaucratic inertia, or possibly because they are now so desperate for money that they are going back and double-checking everything.

calcotti

The issue is not whether DWP knew about the death. They did and stopped Pension and AA at that time.
The problem is that DWP would not have known your mother had gone into a care home unless they were told at the time. AA is not payable to someone in a care home for more than 28 days unless they are paying the fees themselves. DWP have to be informed by the claimant that they are now in a care home (I appreciate that are many reasons why this may not happen, as in your case). There has therefore been an overpayment. It will be a debt owed by the estate.
Don’t know how they have now discovered this, perhaps there is some periodic checking of DWP and local authority records.

Placitasgirl

As Calcotti says the issue here is whether DWP were informed of the change of circumstances that occurred when your Mum went into the care home. As she was in receipt of benefit there a requirement to report any "change in circumstances" such as  a hospital stay of 28 days or more, and also a move to a care home. This is clearly stated when award notices are sent as such changes affect and can stop entitlement to Attendance Allowance. 

As your mum had dementia/lacked mental capacity who was responsible for managing her affairs at this time? Was there a Power of Attorney in place? Who looked after her bank accounts etc whilst she was in the care home and would have seen that Mum was still receiving the benefit? Who applied for AA for Mum and where/to whom would the award notices and reminders to report any change in circumstances have been sent? 

It does appear that Mum might have continued to receive AA after a change of circumstances may have meant she was no longer entitled and if that is the case then DWP may reclaim the overpayment. 

TELLIT01

DWP can only reclaim money from the estate, so if she had no savings at the time of her death the money can not be claimed from anybody else.

Cugel_the_notsoclever

My mother had lived independently until she broke a leg in November 2015. She spent several months in hospital and eventually went into a residential home in July 2016. At that point she may have applied for attendance allowance, although her main preoccupation back then was to return to her flat, which was not possible – she had some savings but not enough to pay for someone to live in with her. Mum lived about 45 miles from me and as an only child it fell to me to help her with her financial affairs. Towards the end of her stay in hospital I discovered that her bank had frozen her accounts, then I found out that she had been in the habit of giving her debit card and PIN number to people like the volunteers who brought newspapers and drinks around the ward – she would ask them to get cash out for her. Thus, during her first few months in residential care she was unable to pay her bills until the POA came through. A further complication was that a routine check-up in July 2016 revealed that I had lost a lot of my bone marrow to Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and I needed to start chemotherapy. Between that and holding down my job, it never occurred to me to review the benefits that she was receiving – and there may well have been benefits that she missed out on. My focus at the time was on unfreezing her accounts, getting her bills paid, and trying to stop her doing unwise things with her debit card (and that became a running battle which involved threats of legal action and calls to the police). But, I don’t know where the application for attendance allowance came from.

I think that all I can do is write to the DWP, describe the situation and the events – and ask if they know who applied for the attendance allowance, who it was paid to, and just be honest with them and let them know that it has come as a bit of a surprise to me to discover that she was receiving this benefit. If her estate owes money to the DWP then so be it - I suppose I'm just a bit miffed to find out about it 18 months after she passed. It appears that even though she is no longer with us, my mother has not lost her ability to surprise me with her financial affairs.

sitesafe

Hi - had similar situation with DWP after probate appointed. The whole process took about 17 months from a month after she passed away.  Unfortunately the probate rules changed part way through and then we had lockdown.  With my conversations with the case manager it was often that he was still waiting for the DWP to get back to him - apparently they can be very slow in doing so.  It turned out that in the end Mum didn’t owe the DWP any money.  Good luck with it as you’re probably under a lot of pressure to get it finalised.  We used the Coop.

[Deleted User]

OP I suppose the question is was there an estate i.e did mum leave any money and was it enough (over 15k) for probate? If mum had been paid money by the DWP she was not entitled to and there was an estate then they are probably entitled to their money back, trust me they are not so desperate for money that they are checking everything, they are far too busy dealing with all the new claims for UC and JSA.