Too much savings!!

HillStreetBlues

Pandora_2 said:

There's about £5.5k in my ISA and £1500 in my current account. About £20 in my purse! So I'm still over but apparently this month's money won't count until the end of the pay period? I did have more in my bank account but I've been making some payments and purchases this morning. 

As you get more than £1k in income (your UC & PIP payments even forgetting any CoL payment) then you are now below the lower limit, so no need to do anything more now.

The repayment will take a fair bit of calculation. At the end of each AP they will have to work out your capital (monies- income) and also take account of any CoL payments. Also then need to take account of the 12 month disregard for the backdated  benefit payments.

Pandora_2

peteuk said:

Pandora_2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

The fact you have a debt counts is your favour as if you had know you have the deductions you would have paid of the debt sooner.
What is your total monies you have now?  include everything cash and all money in bank accounts.

There's about £5.5k in my ISA and £1500 in my current account. About £20 in my purse! So I'm still over but apparently this month's money won't count until the end of the pay period? I did have more in my bank account but I've been making some payments and purchases this morning. 

So of the £1.5K in your account - how much of that was in the account at the start of this UC assessment period. If for arguments sake it was £750 then your Capital is £6.250 but then your take off the disregard for COL.  

What you may wish to do, and I am sure DWP will also do this is go through your accounts.   If there is a period in which you are obviously over the £6K limit then an overpayment has occurred (£4.35 for every £250 or part of there on in).  Im not sure but they then may look at what you did to reduce that amount back under the £6K (eg pay debt, normal spending ect) 

Once worked out you’ll potentially get an amount of which they say is over paid and you’ll be expected to pay that back. It’s tough but thats the way it is. This overpayment may be taken out of your current claim or you can pay it from your ISA. 

I would add that having been through debt management, I was always advised to save where I could or at least have a plan B in case something happened, so I totally get that whilst you have been paying your debt off you've been saving.  It’s just difficult to get the balance right. Good luck and please do let us know how you get on. 

I had over £12k in savings at one point so I made a £5k payment to my Mum for money I owed her and then got the rest down with normal spending and other largish debt payments. I know they are gonna want money back off me as I had a lot of money for a while as I thought saving would be good for emergencies or if I lost my PIP. I will probably just pay them straight out of my ISA as then at least I will be under the threshold again for a while! What a nightmare!! Thanks mate 👍 

Pandora_2

HillStreetBlues said:

Pandora_2 said:

There's about £5.5k in my ISA and £1500 in my current account. About £20 in my purse! So I'm still over but apparently this month's money won't count until the end of the pay period? I did have more in my bank account but I've been making some payments and purchases this morning. 

As you get more than £1k in income (your UC & PIP payments even forgetting any CoL payment) then you are now below the lower limit, so no need to do anything more now.

The repayment will take a fair bit of calculation. At the end of each AP they will have to work out your capital (monies- income) and also take account of any CoL payments. Also then need to take account of the 12 month disregard for the backdated  benefit payments.

Yeah my UC is about £1300 and my PIP is about £700. Don't know how much I've had in CoL payments but the maximum I assume! I was over the £6k for quite a while so there's gonna be loads to pay back. Just gotta suck it up I suppose!! 

HillStreetBlues

They might look at the £5k payment to your mum, to be sure it was a repayment. Do you have any paperwork or a paper trail when she lent it?

Pandora_2

HillStreetBlues said:

They might look at the £5k payment to your mum, to be sure it was a repayment. Do you have any paperwork or a paper trail when she lent it?

No, nothing. She just used to pay my rent and bills for me while I had no income, she never actually handed me any money. I probably owe her a lot more than that but that's what we've settled on. Hope it doesn't cause a problem coz she can't afford to pay it back to me as she needed it when her roof collapsed! 

HillStreetBlues

Pandora_2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

They might look at the £5k payment to your mum, to be sure it was a repayment. Do you have any paperwork or a paper trail when she lent it?

No, nothing. She just used to pay my rent and bills for me while I had no income, she never actually handed me any money. I probably owe her a lot more than that but that's what we've settled on. Hope it doesn't cause a problem coz she can't afford to pay it back to me as she needed it when her roof collapsed! 

If they do bring it up and claim deprivation of capital you can fight it. Part of DoC is about knowingly reducing capital  to increase benefit entitlement,  as you didn't know about the deduction over £6k, then you couldn't have known about any DoC.

Pandora_2

HillStreetBlues said:

Pandora_2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

They might look at the £5k payment to your mum, to be sure it was a repayment. Do you have any paperwork or a paper trail when she lent it?

No, nothing. She just used to pay my rent and bills for me while I had no income, she never actually handed me any money. I probably owe her a lot more than that but that's what we've settled on. Hope it doesn't cause a problem coz she can't afford to pay it back to me as she needed it when her roof collapsed! 

If they do bring it up and claim deprivation of capital you can fight it. Part of DoC is about knowingly reducing capital  to increase benefit entitlement,  as you didn't know about the deduction over £6k, then you couldn't have known about any DoC.

I've never even heard of deprivation of capital until today so I definitely haven't done it on purpose!! I will definitely fight it if they claim I've just been giving money away! 

Exodi

Outside of the issue with savings limits, is there any reason you haven't paid off the relatively small £1.7k debt with savings?

In general debt costs more than savings earn (of course, there are exceptions where the debt may be temporarily interest free but as much of the debt sounds historic based on your signature, I'm not sure this is the case). It also sounds like you're not keen on investing, so likely have a Cash ISA generating at most 5% AER. Typical consumer debt could easily be charging double digits in interest.

Pandora_2 said:
I had over £12k in savings at one point so I made a £5k payment to my Mum for money I owed her 

Pandora_2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

They might look at the £5k payment to your mum, to be sure it was a repayment. Do you have any paperwork or a paper trail when she lent it?

No, nothing. She just used to pay my rent and bills for me while I had no income, she never actually handed me any money. I probably owe her a lot more than that but that's what we've settled on. Hope it doesn't cause a problem coz she can't afford to pay it back to me as she needed it when her roof collapsed! 

Pandora_2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

Pandora_2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

They might look at the £5k payment to your mum, to be sure it was a repayment. Do you have any paperwork or a paper trail when she lent it?

No, nothing. She just used to pay my rent and bills for me while I had no income, she never actually handed me any money. I probably owe her a lot more than that but that's what we've settled on. Hope it doesn't cause a problem coz she can't afford to pay it back to me as she needed it when her roof collapsed! 

If they do bring it up and claim deprivation of capital you can fight it. Part of DoC is about knowingly reducing capital  to increase benefit entitlement,  as you didn't know about the deduction over £6k, then you couldn't have known about any DoC.

I've never even heard of deprivation of capital until today so I definitely haven't done it on purpose!! I will definitely fight it if they claim I've just been giving money away! 

To be honest, the optics don't look great. Hopefully they don't notice this.

HillStreetBlues said:

Pandora_2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

They might look at the £5k payment to your mum, to be sure it was a repayment. Do you have any paperwork or a paper trail when she lent it?

No, nothing. She just used to pay my rent and bills for me while I had no income, she never actually handed me any money. I probably owe her a lot more than that but that's what we've settled on. Hope it doesn't cause a problem coz she can't afford to pay it back to me as she needed it when her roof collapsed! 

If they do bring it up and claim deprivation of capital you can fight it. Part of DoC is about knowingly reducing capital  to increase benefit entitlement,  as you didn't know about the deduction over £6k, then you couldn't have known about any DoC.

I don't frequent the benefits board that often but  is ignorance a valid defense? (this sounds really aggressive without me intending it to be, I don't mean to suggest the OP is ignorant as the rules are clearly not straightforward).

Again I'm certainly far from an expert, but I'd imagine the context of it being for the mum's roof and a figure that essentially was just whipped up between them would raise eyebrows (though I don't expect they'd tell them it was for the mum's roof).

Pandora_2

Exodi said:

Outside of the issue with savings limits, is there any reason you haven't paid off the relatively small £1.7k debt with savings?

In general debt costs more than savings earn (of course, there are exceptions where the debt may be temporarily interest free but as much of the debt sounds historic based on your signature, I'm not sure this is the case). It also sounds like you're not keen on investing, so likely have a Cash ISA generating at most 5% AER. Typical consumer debt could easily be charging double digits in interest.

Pandora_2 said:
I had over £12k in savings at one point so I made a £5k payment to my Mum for money I owed her 

Pandora_2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

They might look at the £5k payment to your mum, to be sure it was a repayment. Do you have any paperwork or a paper trail when she lent it?

No, nothing. She just used to pay my rent and bills for me while I had no income, she never actually handed me any money. I probably owe her a lot more than that but that's what we've settled on. Hope it doesn't cause a problem coz she can't afford to pay it back to me as she needed it when her roof collapsed! 

Pandora_2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

Pandora_2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

They might look at the £5k payment to your mum, to be sure it was a repayment. Do you have any paperwork or a paper trail when she lent it?

No, nothing. She just used to pay my rent and bills for me while I had no income, she never actually handed me any money. I probably owe her a lot more than that but that's what we've settled on. Hope it doesn't cause a problem coz she can't afford to pay it back to me as she needed it when her roof collapsed! 

If they do bring it up and claim deprivation of capital you can fight it. Part of DoC is about knowingly reducing capital  to increase benefit entitlement,  as you didn't know about the deduction over £6k, then you couldn't have known about any DoC.

I've never even heard of deprivation of capital until today so I definitely haven't done it on purpose!! I will definitely fight it if they claim I've just been giving money away! 

To be honest, the optics don't look great. Hopefully they don't notice this.

HillStreetBlues said:

Pandora_2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

They might look at the £5k payment to your mum, to be sure it was a repayment. Do you have any paperwork or a paper trail when she lent it?

No, nothing. She just used to pay my rent and bills for me while I had no income, she never actually handed me any money. I probably owe her a lot more than that but that's what we've settled on. Hope it doesn't cause a problem coz she can't afford to pay it back to me as she needed it when her roof collapsed! 

If they do bring it up and claim deprivation of capital you can fight it. Part of DoC is about knowingly reducing capital  to increase benefit entitlement,  as you didn't know about the deduction over £6k, then you couldn't have known about any DoC.

I don't frequent the benefits board that often but  is ignorance a valid defense? (this sounds really aggressive without me intending it to be, I don't mean to suggest the OP is ignorant as the rules are clearly not straightforward).

Again I'm certainly far from an expert, but I'd imagine the context of it being for the mum's roof and a figure that essentially was just whipped up between them would raise eyebrows (though I don't expect they'd tell them it was for the mum's roof).

Thankfully they were/are old debts where I've had the interest and charges frozen and been on payment plans. I've slowly increased the payments as I realised I could afford more and made one off payments of larger amounts in order to clear them faster. There was a lot more than £1.7k! I've just paid another £500 off that last debt today and my monthly payment is £70. I'm trying to pay off £500 a month extra now I've got the money but could probably clear it in one go as you say. 

I'm worried about the £5k to my Mum as I put 'roof' as the reference rather than 'debt' but I honestly do owe her a fortune. She must have forked out at least £10k on my rent and bills over the years I've been ill and out of work. She never would have asked for it back if it hadn't been an emergency but obviously I was more than happy to pay her back when she needed it. 

HillStreetBlues

@Exodi I take your post as trying to find out more information and certainly not in any form aggressive.
There are two issue with the OP, (1) Overpayment of UC and (2) the £5k that went to their mother.

1) When claiming income related benefit, the claimant is warned about reporting changes and capital is one of them, so it will be deemed that the claimant does know. It's why it will be classed as benefit fraud, although fraud needs intent, legally the claimant does know and legally, they didn't disclose. For this ignorance is no defence.

2) Is different it needs a ‘significant operative purpose’(case law R(SB)40/85) & there was a positive intention to secure benefit (case law R(SB)40/85)to be classed as DoC.  If will not be enough the DWP to say passing on the £5k to their mother is DoC as it means they are entitled to more money, they have to show (to a reasonable person) that is what they intended.

There is no fighting number 1 all that can be done is to mitigate it. 2 can be fought