Gifted money for a house on uc

HillStreetBlues

Newcad said:

Unfortunately whilst a Quistclose Trust works from a legal point of view you need to think practically here.

The DWP/UC will regard the gifted money as savings/capital, they will act accordingly and stop UC.

A tribunal appeal on the grounds that it's a Quistclose Trust may well get that decision overturned - but appeals take time and in the meantime the UC has been stopped.

By the time you get to tribunal you have probably purchased the property anyway.

I disagree that they will count it as capital if a person submits the details on why it it doesn't count as the person's capital. A DM should know the difference between legal owner and a  beneficial owner, but it is possible a DM might stop UC.
If a DM does stops the claim then once property purchased then claim UC  again but continue with an appeal.

HillStreetBlues

sheramber said:

If your mother owns a house then buying a second one would incur  the  additional stamp duty charge.

I agree, If OP would be a first time buyer in England then if mother does own another property the Stamp Duty would be about an extra £25,000 if mother bought house.

Newcad

Perhaps I've been doing this too long and experience has made me cynical.

In my experience of thousands (if not millions) of forum posts what a DM should do and what actually happens are often different things.
It's because the DMs don't do what they should that the DWP lose so many tribunal appeals.

TELLIT01

Newcad said:

Perhaps I've been doing this too long and experience has made me cynical.

In my experience of thousands (if not millions) of forum posts what a DM should do and what actually happens are often different things.
It's because the DMs don't do what they should that the DWP lose so many tribunal appeals.

DMs often have to interpret the rules which is why they may come to differing opinions on a particular case.  If the rules were totally clear cut there would be no need for DMs.  I did also work with very good DMs who would investigate thoroughly in order to try to reach the correct decision, but other DMs really couldn't have cared less and made a decision based on minimal information.

Newcad

I personally have had a conversation with a DM myself about a problem I had when I was on ESA, she phoned me and she was very good.

One issue seen to happen in UC is that Case Managers have the authority to 'act' as a DM for certain things, but sometimes end up 'acting' on things they are not trained to handle.

HillStreetBlues

Most appeals are from PIP, UC has a much lower appeal rate.
This is most certainly due to the "assessment" as we know a DM will normally stick to the assessment, bad info in, bad info out.
If given the correct information then a DM will will normally reach the right decision

Newcad

You seem to be totally forgetting the Work Capability Assessment which applies in both ESA and UC and where the majority of appeals also go in the claimants favour.

But it's not just assessments. One issue is that UC would not issue any statistics at all on MRs and appeals until fairly recently. (And still currently call them 'experimental').

The fact remains that by far the majority of DWP/UC decisions that are appealed get overturned in the claimants favour.

Yes- the court will put things right in the end, but they only have to do that because the DWP/UC get them wrong so often.

We are in danger of straying into policy here, which is not allowed on this forum.

HillStreetBlues

Newcad said:

You seem to be totally forgetting the Work Capability Assessment which applies in both ESA and UC and where the majority of appeals also go in the claimants favour.

I'm not forgetting the WCA as I mentioned as my post talks about assessments that is whole point of my post, and what the stats can lead up to believe.
As thereare more appeals with PIP ( and more people win their appeal than with UC) is everyone claiming PIP are stating they are "disabled", and with PIP nearly everyone will have an assessment. If the assessment is incorrect normally the decision will be incorrect.
With UC not everyone is claiming being unable to work, so as a percentage there are far fewer assessments with UC than PIP, hence a lower appeal rate.

Newcad said:

The fact remains that by far the majority of DWP/UC decisions that are appealed get overturned in the claimants favour.

Yes- the court will put things right in the end, but they only have to do that because the DWP/UC get them wrong so often.

We are in danger of straying into policy here, which is not allowed on this forum.

The DWP doesn't get them wrong so often, that just misleading.
PIP for example the Tribunal overturns just 2% of PIP claims,  so it's deemed that the correct decision was make 98% of the time before it actually reaching a Tribunal. (No doubt some people should have appealed but didn't, but unless they appealed then it has to be considered a correct decision)
EDIT
As UC Tribunal overturns are less than PIP that would mean UC correct decision before tibunal will be over 98%
 

Danien

Newcad said:

Perhaps I've been doing this too long and experience has made me cynical.

In my experience of thousands (if not millions) of forum posts what a DM should do and what actually happens are often different things.
It's because the DMs don't do what they should that the DWP lose so many tribunal appeals.

Yes, they get training, but like with anything, people make mistakes. Back in the day in order to pass the training period you had to have 5% errors or less. I don’t know if they still do it the same way, but it does mean they're expecting that up to 5% of decisions will have errors.

Some can't accept their errors, I had a decision maker so convinced they were right that they wrote a diatribe against me (I was representing the client) in their submission for appeal. It was wonderful when the judge found for the client, and then went on to tell off the decision maker who actually attended the tribunal.

Danien

HillStreetBlues said:

Newcad said:

You seem to be totally forgetting the Work Capability Assessment which applies in both ESA and UC and where the majority of appeals also go in the claimants favour.

I'm not forgetting the WCA as I mentioned as my post talks about assessments that is whole point of my post, and what the stats can lead up to believe.
As thereare more appeals with PIP ( and more people win their appeal than with UC) is everyone claiming PIP are stating they are "disabled", and with PIP nearly everyone will have an assessment. If the assessment is incorrect normally the decision will be incorrect.
With UC not everyone is claiming being unable to work, so as a percentage there are far fewer assessments with UC than PIP, hence a lower appeal rate.

Newcad said:

The fact remains that by far the majority of DWP/UC decisions that are appealed get overturned in the claimants favour.

Yes- the court will put things right in the end, but they only have to do that because the DWP/UC get them wrong so often.

We are in danger of straying into policy here, which is not allowed on this forum.

The DWP doesn't get them wrong so often, that just misleading.
PIP for example the Tribunal overturns just 2% of PIP claims,  so it's deemed that the correct decision was make 98% of the time before it actually reaching a Tribunal. (No doubt some people should have appealed but didn't, but unless they appealed then it has to be considered a correct decision)
EDIT
As UC Tribunal overturns are less than PIP that would mean UC correct decision before tibunal will be over 98%
 

I'm confused where you're getting your numbers from

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/appeals-backlog-rises-as-success-rates-fall-for-all-but-pip

It's also worth remembering that the DWP now (after rubber stamping the original decision on mandatory reconsideration for most) check all appeals before they reach Tribunal and overturn a lot of original decisions- I just had my PIP decision overturned a couple of weeks after making the appeal before providing any extra info. So those were all incorrect decisions too.