Joint accounts with parents & benefits?

lara72

Hi

I am after advice regarding benefits for the elderly. I’m trying to get my parents pension credit but it there is a section about savings. 

My mum has £20,000 from the sale of there house when she downsized & she’s saved this for her part rent she pays.  

the other money in the account is mine that I save in our joint account for emergencies. 

Will she have to declare the whole of the amount in the joint account or just her amount.  

I don’t understand how these systems work so sorry for the daft question. 

Thx

General_Grant

Normally  I believe money in joint accounts is treated as belonging in equal shares to the account holders.
Do you have a formal written agreement about how much belongs to you and how much to your mother?
How long have you had this joint account?  What is the amount of the interest?

Brie

Different scenario but when MiL & OH had joint accounts the local council took the money to be a 50/50 split between them when seeing how much money MiL had available to pay towards her care home fees.  

If you actually have less than 50% of the balance you could of course declare that.  Or you could just honestly ask whatever questions are asked, when they are asked but not before.  If your mom is asked how much is in this joint account she can give the total.  They might come back and ask how much of that is hers or they might not.  The problem may be if they discover she has too much for getting pension credit she may be asked to pay a large amount back of not just the PC but the cost of other benefits provided as well. 

Easyjet77

Hello, if you mother has £20000 savings (as you have posted), I think she would be highly unlikely to qualify for pension credit, regardless how any amount above this is split. I'm sure you will get more informative help on the benefits board.

Keep_pedalling

You really need to separate your finances. Has your mother made a lasting power of attorney?

xylophone

my parents 

Your parents live together?

Re Pension Credit

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/globalassets/age-uk/documents/factsheets/fs48_pension_credit_fcs.pdf

Re ownership/ interest on joint account where holders are not spouses /civil partners

See 

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/savings-and-investment-manual/saim2420

Where a savings account or other source of interest is owned jointly by persons who are not spouses or civil partners, they will be taxed on the interest to which they are actually entitled. In most cases, the practical result is that interest will be split equally between the account-holders. This is because the funds held in bank, building society or similar accounts in joint names are usually intended by the account holders to be held in joint ownership; irrespective of how much each has contributed. This means that each account holder is entitled jointly to all of the funds in the account, and interest is paid to the account holders jointly. Where there is no, or insufficient evidence, to show that the account holders intended the funds in the account to be held in joint ownership or in specified shares, the parties will be taxed according to the share of funds that each has respectively contributed.