Recovery from estate, how long?

horseymom1991

Hello,

Does anyone have any current/recent experiences with how long the recovery from estates department are taking to investigate into whether someone was over paid benefits before death?

Thank-you 🙂

NedS

It can take as long as 12-18 months.

When did the person die? Have DWP made contact asking for details of income/savings etc? Do you know that there has been an overpayment?

NedS

I'm going to move this thread to the Deaths, Funerals & Probate board as I think you'll get more informed answers there.

Gonk1967

My father-in-law passed away in mid February, we had letters from the DWP Debt Management about overpayment of his DLA, Pension Credits, and Retirement Pension by mid April.

HillStreetBlues

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82122446#Comment_82122446

That sounds like more payments continuing after death, which would be different from before death.

p00hsticks

From a number of previous posts on this board, DWP investigations into whether benefits were potentially overpaid before death appear to often be triggered only after probate is obtained and they look at the reported value of the estate.

In a number of cases these turn out to be 'false alarms' in that the bulk of the estate value given was down to the deceased's residence, not savings.

Keep_pedalling

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82122549#Comment_82122549

This is a very small estate where probate / LoA should not have been required however it seems the bank may have demanded it because two siblings were separately trying to get the bank to release the money to them.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6676588/small-estate-query#latest

Was this resolved without the need to resort to probate?

horseymom1991

Hello,

Yes we had to go for letters of administration due to family conflict. We believe dad may have been overpaid some pension credit in the last few months of his life.

Have ordered bank statements to have a look and see roughly how much.

Dad died start of July and we recieved the first letter from dwp at the start of August, haven't heard anything else since.

Gonk1967

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82122527#Comment_82122527

He went into hospital in the middle of September and into a care home in the middle of December and passed away in the middle of February. As I understand it, DLA ceases after four weeks of being in hospital or a care home so he was overpaid for about 16 weeks worth of DLA before he passed away.

sortingtheestate1

The first letter you've had is normally just a fact - they ask what he had in the bank on the date of death and then for statements covering the period they want to look at. Answer exactly what they ask with the actual figures and don't pad it out with anything else.

For Pension Credit the first £10,000 of savings is ignored and every £500 above that counts as £1 a week of income, so a few months over the line usually comes out as a modest figure, not a frightening one. You can roughly work it out yourself once the statements arrive.

As administrator, if you pay everyone out and a bill lands later, it's you they come to, not the beneficiaries. The usual approach is to settle the funeral and other debts, keep back your estimate plus a margin, distribute the rest and hold the reserve until DWP either sends a decision with the calculation or confirms in writing they've closed the file. Don't pay anything on a phone call or a letter without a breakdown - ask for the calculation and check it against the statements.