Disability Money??

Bazz669

Good evening everyone,

I currently have an IVA setup but my income is possibly about to change. My payments to the iva are worked out from the two benefits that I get, ESA and DLA. I have been informed that due to my condition my money will go up as i am classed as severly disabled by the government. The extra money will be from a disability add on premium and the disability living allowance. Is this looked at when working out income. I currently do pay the IVA from my disability money but a few people have said this is wrong. Im hearing conflicting information and im unsure. If it is took into account then i will not claim the money. 

Many thanks in advance

fatbelly

If you get mid or high rate care on  your  DLA and you do not have someone claiming carers allowance for you and live alone then you qualify for SDP and have done so since that situation started. It's £66.95 per week

That's a large amount of money not to clam and if it  is backdated a year or  two then you are looking at a lump sum of many thousand pounds.

In an IVA there is no clear guidance on how benefits are treated so I suspect this will all be treated as windfall/income. You should check the wording of your agreement to see if anything is there

Maybe re-evaluate whether an IVA is the best way to deal with your debts. You are probably a homeowner but if you are renting and were on benefits at the start of this then it looks like yet another case of a badly sold IVA.

N.B. In bankruptcy there is no IPA if income is benefits-only. In a DRO DLA and PIP can be offset as both income and expenditure. Actually debt camel expllains this quite well here

https://debtcamel.co.uk/should-i-include-dla-money-in-my-incomeexpenditure-sheet/

Bazz669

Many thanks for your reply. It seems this is a grey area and no specific rule seems to apply. Just seems to be to do what you think is best and argue about it when they moan.
You are correct with the money going up as it may, but i am not a homeowner nor do i have any assetts. There wont be much mone backdated, a few weeks maybe but no more.y

reliquit

When I entered into an IVA in March 2014, Aperture (or Grant Thornton as they were then) insisted on classifying my wife's DLA as income. I argued that it was not, as it was given to us specifically to pay for household adaptations or equipment essential to my wife's health. Eventually a compromise was reached where they classed it as income, but put a clause in my IVA document permitting us to save a large amount (equal to approx 70%) of the DLA every month in order to pay for "unexpected expenses connected with my wife's disability"

fatbelly

As above, an IVA is an 'Individual' agreement and how income is treated has to agreed at the start.

The OP needs to look at this carefully as there seems to be no good reason why an IVA was recommended over bankruptcy where this would  have been done and dusted in 12 months - still might be the best way forward.