Impact of Pension Credit Assessed Income Period at death?

Nas20

Dealing with confusing info while handling my mother's estate.

Does anyone here have first-hand experience of dealing with an estate of someone who received benefits? 

She had an AIP for Pension Credit (indefinite period I think) when she died, and so hadn't been required to report savings information unless it meant the Pension Credit would reduce.

Have found her savings were over what would have been the level where it would change credit received. Do the DWP disregard the savings over the threshold because of the AIP being active when she died, or will they need to go back to when it started going over the threshold to calculate any overpayments of benefit? Am still waiting for them to contact me after using Tell us Once.

Nas20

Nas20 said:

Dealing with confusing info while handling my mother's estate.

Does anyone here have first-hand experience of dealing with an estate of someone who received benefits? 

She had an AIP for Pension Credit (indefinite period I think) when she died, and so hadn't been required to report savings information unless it meant the Pension Credit entitlement would *increase*[corrected].

Have found her savings were over what would have been the level where it would change credit received. Do the DWP disregard the savings over the threshold because of the AIP being active when she died, or will they need to go back to when it started going over the threshold to calculate any overpayments of benefit? Am still waiting for them to contact me after using Tell us Once.

Amended 3rd para...

Keep_pedalling

How old was your mother when she died? How long had she been receiving PC. I ask as the Indefinite  terms have been abolished back in 2016 and only a small % of PC claimants would still be on it. Also is she had moved into a care home that would have ended the need not to declare any financial changes.

Do you need to apply for probate for her estate? 

Nas20

88, and she would have had PC prior to the changes in 2016. She was at home and probate wasn't required

Nas20

Keep_pedalling said:

How old was your mother when she died? How long had she been receiving PC. I ask as the Indefinite  terms have been abolished back in 2016 and only a small % of PC claimants would still be on it. Also is she had moved into a care home that would have ended the need not to declare any financial changes.

Do you need to apply for probate for her estate? 

88, and she would have had PC prior to the changes in 2016. She was at home and probate wasn't required

Keep_pedalling

Nas20 said:

Keep_pedalling said:

How old was your mother when she died? How long had she been receiving PC. I ask as the Indefinite  terms have been abolished back in 2016 and only a small % of PC claimants would still be on it. Also is she had moved into a care home that would have ended the need not to declare any financial changes.

Do you need to apply for probate for her estate? 

88, and she would have had PC prior to the changes in 2016. She was at home and probate wasn't required

In which case it is unlikely that the DWP will take any action as she will have been on an indefinite assessment period and you have not had to apply for probate. It is probate that usually triggers them to look into this because the estate value is significantly higher than the savings limit because it also includes the value of a property.

My mother had an indefinite assessment period and died with an estate of just over £20k with no requirement for probate and I had no communication from the DWP questioning her PC payments.

Nas20

Keep_pedalling said:

Nas20 said:

Keep_pedalling said:

How old was your mother when she died? How long had she been receiving PC. I ask as the Indefinite  terms have been abolished back in 2016 and only a small % of PC claimants would still be on it. Also is she had moved into a care home that would have ended the need not to declare any financial changes.

Do you need to apply for probate for her estate? 

88, and she would have had PC prior to the changes in 2016. She was at home and probate wasn't required

In which case it is unlikely that the DWP will take any action as she will have been on an indefinite assessment period and you have not had to apply for probate. It is probate that usually triggers them to look into this because the estate value is significantly higher than the savings limit because it also includes the value of a property.

My mother had an indefinite assessment period and died with an estate of just over £20k with no requirement for probate and I had no communication from the DWP questioning her PC payments.

Thanks. Really hard to get definitive information on what is probably quite a common question. It's also my worry about doing everything correctly as the administrator.

Am also trying to confirm if the rules state that the balance at death 'should' be taken into account for overpayment calculations despite having been perfectly acceptable under the AIP while she was alive... whether or not something like probate triggered an enquiry. 

I've seen a couple of old posts where dwp investigated even though an AIP was in place, poster had to challenge the decision and keep stating the deceased had an AIP at time of death (even though it's on their systems!)

RAS

As explained these are generally probate cases, where the sale of property massively increases the value of liquid assets which were ignored previously because the house was the deceased's home.  

Keep_pedalling

The DWP are interested in two possible situations, the first is that someone entitled to PC at the time of application but failed to notify them when there financial situation changed and that someone may never have been entitled to in the first place.

You don’t have to worry about either of these they only get flagged as possibilities when the probate figures become known.

janarchy

"I've seen a couple of old posts where dwp investigated even though an AIP was in place, poster had to challenge the decision and keep stating the deceased had an AIP at time of death (even though it's on their systems!)"

Sadly, I went through the Probate process - my mother left about £20k. She was 88 when she died May 1 2024 and had an AIP. So will have long before 2016. Her 'estate' was inflated by an overpayment by the DWP of one week's SP, PC and attendance allowance to which she became entitled in 2007. I had to apply for Probate and it was granted later that summer. I was also asked for an estimate of assets - which were minimal really so I put on a value of £300 which was over generous I repaid the DWP overpayment on three elements, got receipts for two elements, and spoke to someone in Debt Management (their over payment becomes OUR debt) whose voice had not an ounce of sympathy in it.

I later got a letter staying my mother had "more savings" than the DWP would have thought so not to distribute the estate until they said. They asked me to provide a breakdown of figures for probate which had to exactly match the Probate sum - which included their overpayment - but I did so and (it's a very slow process) got a second letter months and months later saying that they were requesting details of my mother's payments from the local office.

The sum includes PreBonds which she loved, having worked there, and which won in the two months before her death. It also included money from me to repay her half of a stairlift which had been installed in sept and which she wanted removed immediately - it cost £2k and we'd have got £350 back. I couldn't support her upstairs any more as she would become a dead weight and lean against me on a narrow staircase and I'm failing heath wise so rather than argue I effectively refunded half of my payment, and then later the other half. If the stairlift had been taken out she would have never been allowed home after a fall (late Sept) which revealed the extent of her terminal illnesses - she was discharged back home in October. The stairlift was risk assessed. If it hadn't been approved Ma would have been in a council run care home or deemed a bed blocker. It's unlikely she'd have been treated in the hospice - although we had access to a hospice community nurse and district nurses and carers via NHS continuing care. The loathed stairlift became our quality of life line - but it also shows how complex end of life financial affairs can be. When I got It removed in order to get the badly stained carpet up and some renovations done in 2025 I got £150 on a £2k stairlift that I had paid for in full.

So at present I'm still between a rock and a hard place. Because my mother left several really touching bequests to people who she loved and had helped her - I honoured those from my own savings rather than have them wait indefinitely. One of my brothers had been left a third of her Prebonds with me and our other brother, and he was in need of a bond to secure a rental house in France, where he's lived for for more than 25 years, so I did what I think my mother would have wanted, and gave him that cash too, out of my savings and rounded it up to £5k, hoping I'd be able to refund myself later.

It's a nightmare.

BooJewels

My aunt got PC with an AIP and I was one of the ones that got a letter from DWP with indecent haste after Probate was granted - as previously mentioned - telling us not to distribute the estate before they'd done their investigation which can take up to a year. Obviously the value of her property made it look like she had gob loads of savings.

Luckily, when I rang them I got to speak to a lady who was on the case and she got it straight away. I gave her the details of values in her estate and she was happy to accept them over the phone and wrote a couple of weeks later confirming that everything was in order, I just had a couple of weeks of overpayment to repay which they'd write about separately. It gave me an initial fright that I could have done without.