Inheritance and house purchase effect on benefits

kayteedee

I am currently on Universal credit / PIP / Housing benefit and council tax benefit. I'm due to inherit a significant amount of money and be able to buy a home. I assume that once I inherit  I will lose my income-related benefits but what happens if I then buy a house. If my savings then fall back under the savings freshhold can I reclaim the benefits (I will be mortgage free) or are the DWP not going to accept that because I spent the inheritance on a home. I'm currently in a council flat.

I read somewhere online that someone had bought a home with inheritance money and it had not affected his benefits but he'd had to buy the property within 3 months and the property had had to be approved by the DWP. I am chronically ill so I don't want to put that sort of time pressure on myself. 

Also if I buy a two-bed home as a single person will that have any impact on whether the DWP would reinstate my benefits? 

This may be too complex a question to answer here? If so does anyone know of a good financial advisor who is really up to speed with the complexities of the benefits system. 

Brie

I would think that talking to someone at Citizen's Advice would be a good (& free) place to start.  They will know much more about benefits than any conventional financial adviser.  

Keep_pedalling

Buying a house is not deprivation of assets so it should not affect the ability to claim benefits again although you obviously won’t get housing benefit anymore. 2 two bedroom house is not unreasonable for a single person.  An IFA might be useful if you are going to a significant amount of money left over to invest but I doubt any can advise on benefits. 

Muttleythefrog

Agree regarding financial advisor... I doubt you'll find any suitably qualified to advise on the intricacies of the benefits system.

Yes you would lose income related benefits with the substantial inheritance.

Buying a home to live in would not be considered deprivation of capital and would make sense as an action - in fact you'd reduce dependency on benefits as you'd lose housing benefit/housing element(UC).

Regarding the case you've heard - this sounds unusual. I'm not aware of anything in the rules that sets out that possibility. There is possibility of disregarding monies in some situations with intent to purchase but for 6 months and not in this situation. It's possible a decision maker has made some ruling but it's also possibly a misunderstanding or made up. It's difficult to get them to give decisions based on future scenarios - they tend to be reactive to reported changes after the event.

PIP would not be affected at all... but as I see it you may temporarily lose UC and CTS.

Spoonie_Turtle

As an aside, whatever you do with the money, if you have LCW or LCWRA on UC it might be an idea to open a credits-only claim for ESA before you inherit and your UC claim closes.  That way you'll keep your WCA outcome ('preserve your LCW/RA status', if you will) and it means you'll still have LCW/RA for when you reclaim UC instead of having to go through the WCA again.