Benefits and NI

llamaly

Hi all, 

my first post here.

i checked my NI Contributions and from 2018, until present, my years are not full.

my youngest child turned 12, so I know child benefit would be discounted then but I was on a joint claim of income related ESA with my partner who was in the support group and I was his unpaid carer. I thought this would mean I would have full years with my NI contributions, but did I get this wrong? 

Thanks for any info on this.

molerat

I believe that as a couple only the main claimant will receive the credits but the carer can make a claim for credits, they are not awarded automatically.  I will report this post to get it moved to the benefits board as the experts over there are much more up on this type of scenario than here.

poppy12345

Yes, only the main claimant of the ESA will receive NI credits. You say you were an unpaid carer, was your partner claiming either PIP daily living or DLA mid/high rate care? If so then you could have claimed carers allowance for looking after them. You would have then received class 1 NI credits as well. https://www.gov.uk/carers-allowance/eligibility

llamaly

Thank you molerat.

poppy, yes he had higher daily living and mobility at standard rate. In our benefits we received extra, not sure how much as it wasn’t listed in our statement, as I was his carer and didn’t need to have back to work interviews,  so I didn’t need to claim carers allowance separately. 

Yamor

You would not have received extra money in the ESA award for your caring responsibilities, as you need to actually claim Carer's Allowance for this.

I would therefore advise making a claim for Carer's Allowance ASAP.

However, Carer's Allowance will only backdate for a maximum of 3 months, so this won't help to plug the gap in your National Insurance record.

You can separately make a claim for Carer's Credit, which can be backdated to the start of the last tax year. You can request a greater backdate than that, but that would depend on whether you have reasonable grounds for it.