Recovery from estate dwp

gorillagirl

Please can anyone help?

DWP are asking for bank details from 6/10/2003 to see if deceased mum was overpaid pension credit. Presumably, this was when she was first assessed. I have no record of what her financial situation was on that day or what information was given. I have bank statements from 2008 for a newly opened account and 2010 for her current account. I have no doubt that the bank are not going to have kept details from 2003. The letter from DWP is confusing as it implies they will base evidence on the information I can supply - which will not be the same as 2003, when she was assessed. Mum had AIP (for which there is paperwork but not as far back as bank statements) and was 99 when she died in September. I understand this has arisen because the figures from Probate don't match those of 2003.  Mum had squirrelled away savings by not spending her attendence allowance, this was recently starting to be used to pay for carers but then she passed away. Her home has an endowment of £54000, which will be paid back on selling, and is accruing interest.

Please, any insight as to what to say to DWP would be very welcome. If it turns out that DWP claim the pension credit back it will be thousands.

Robbie64

06/10/03 is when Pension Credit was first introduced. It replaced the Minimum Income Guarantee which was effectively Income Support for pensioners. I don't think pensioners were actually assessed for Pension Credit at the point it was introduced but rather their claims were just migrated from MIG/IS. However there would have been a reassessment of individual pensioners incomes and savings at some point around that time as form A2  (an Income Support reasessment form) would have been sent out either before MIG/IS becmae PC or at some point after by whatever form (if any) replaced form A2. In addition, around that time the capital limits, for how much savings a person could have before benefit is affected, changed for pensioners.

All you can do is provide the information you have. Banks won't have details of accounts going back to 2003. I doubt they would have more than the last 6 years worth of account details. What are the balances on her bank accounts back in 2008 and 2010? Do they exceed £6,000? If not the DWP may accept that back in 2003 her savings were below £6,000.

TELLIT01

If you have to send documents to any department, make sure that you take copies first.  It is far from unusual for documents to simply disappear into the system and then to be asked for the information again.

pmlindyloo

These letters are often sent automatically from Pension Credit after someone has died.  It does not mean than any money is owed.

Based on your mother's age it is quite possible that your mother had an Assessed Income Period in place whilst receiving PC.  This means that any change in savings would not have been needed to be reported and would make no difference to her PC.

Read this:

Assessed income periods - Entitledto

Before you go searching for bank statements it is worth making a telephone call to PC and asking them if your mum had an AIP in place.

In general terms where an AIP is not in place the claimant can have up to £10000 in savings.  Any amount over this would trigger a reduction in PC of a £1 per week for every £500 over the £10K.

This happened to me when my mum died.  Probate was not needed but a letter was still received about overpayments.

A quick phone call sorted everything out.  She had an AIP and no further action was needed.

I asked that a 'no further action was needed' letter to be sent to me as executor and this was done.

Robbie64

^

If Pension Credit are requesting documents back to 2003 then the savings limit for PC was £6,000 rather than £10,000 for part of the period. That was to at least 2009.

xxxxxxxx

roche-legal-dwp-claims-on-estates-2017.pdf (rochelegal.co.uk)  

Good bit of info on that pdf link.  

If they come back with an overpayment, I would have the overpayment logic used and calculation checked out before just paying it back.  

I would also look at whether you only have a responsibility to show her bank balance as it was just before death.  if it was all above board at the point of death the DWP IN MY OPINION have no right to request historical bank statements.  They need (in my opinion) to have good reason to request historical records.  

If the most recent statements are above threshold then they have a reason to ask for more records but does that mean 6 months back or 17 years back in the first instance I would say it allows them to go back 6 months to a year.    You might want to take legal advice in these points.

Robbie64

xxxxxxxx said:

roche-legal-dwp-claims-on-estates-2017.pdf (rochelegal.co.uk)  

Good bit of info on that pdf link.  

If they come back with an overpayment, I would have the overpayment logic used and calculation checked out before just paying it back.  

I would also look at whether you only have a responsibility to show her bank balance as it was just before death.  if it was all above board at the point of death the DWP IN MY OPINION have no right to request historical bank statements.  They need (in my opinion) to have good reason to request historical records.  

If the most recent statements are above threshold then they have a reason to ask for more records but does that mean 6 months back or 17 years back in the first instance I would say it allows them to go back 6 months to a year.    You might want to take legal advice in these points.

The OP believes that information has been received from the Probate office and the information does not match up with that held by the DWP. The DWP can request as much information as is deemed necessary to determine whether benefit was correctly paid. They aren't restricted to asking for bank statements from just the past 12 months.

TELLIT01

My inclination would be to tell them that the bank only has bank statements for the last x years unless you have complete information for a period prior to that .

turnitround

On your other thread you say she gave away 7 years worth of large cash gifts and that there are also cheques with no name as to who they were made out to etc and that she was on Pension Credits.

Could that be why the DWP are digging into her bank statements?

Robbie64

turnitround said:

On your other thread you say she gave away 7 years worth of large cash gifts and that there are also cheques with no name as to who they were made out to etc and that she was on Pension Credits.

Could that be why the DWP are digging into her bank statements?

It might be a possibility. It depends on what information the DWP have picked upon from the probate process. It's possible that the OP won't know what information the DWP have access to. All the OP can do is to provide everything that they are in possession of. That may be a nightmare if there are dozens of bank statements, however that could work in favour of the estate if these statements prove that the capital held was below £10,000 at points in time and all was above board. On the other hand the statements may show large sums of money leaving the account, possibly to a savings account(s). These will therefore need to be investigated. The OP states "Mum had squirrelled away savings by not spending her attendence allowance" which possibly suggests that money was leaving her bank account. It then depends on where the money went and what inferences can be drawn from that.

xxxxxxxx

Robbie64 said:

xxxxxxxx said:

roche-legal-dwp-claims-on-estates-2017.pdf (rochelegal.co.uk)  

Good bit of info on that pdf link.  

If they come back with an overpayment, I would have the overpayment logic used and calculation checked out before just paying it back.  

I would also look at whether you only have a responsibility to show her bank balance as it was just before death.  if it was all above board at the point of death the DWP IN MY OPINION have no right to request historical bank statements.  They need (in my opinion) to have good reason to request historical records.  

If the most recent statements are above threshold then they have a reason to ask for more records but does that mean 6 months back or 17 years back in the first instance I would say it allows them to go back 6 months to a year.    You might want to take legal advice in these points.

The OP believes that information has been received from the Probate office and the information does not match up with that held by the DWP. The DWP can request as much information as is deemed necessary to determine whether benefit was correctly paid. They aren't restricted to asking for bank statements from just the past 12 months.

The probate is just a snap shot of the case as it was on the date of death.  I think they cannot ask for records unless they have good reason to request those records.  If the savings were within threshold at the point of death they have no good reason for any previous records.   But see below. 

The Decision Makers in DWP are extremely poorly trained and just because "that's what they think they can do and have been told to do (by equally poorly trained mentors)" does not make it a lawful request.   

Although I have one  doubt,  My reasoning is based on the DWP asking for bank statements prior to a claim.  DWP can ask for the most recent bank statements to confirm your declaration is truthful.  If your most recent statements are within threshold, they cannot ask for the previous 6 months without good reason.   This is what I am basing my comments on.  It could be the case that once you are then claiming any and all statements during the life of the claim are fair game. 

Which is why I recommended proper legal advice on the topic.