Same sex couples - New rules from December 5th 2005

Fran

Important info for same sex couples which will change the way that benefits are administered, amongst other things, can be seen on the

Citizens Advice website Fact Sheet

crutches

i have to say the benefits being treated asacouple is fair.my dh x wife signedan agreement to hand over share of the house if she remarried orstarted living as man and wife 10 yrs ago...... on the day after that she moved her g/f in! hes been left with 1 wholly resident child,1 partly resident child and no £.she has the house,£ and thinks it is hysterical.she's been claiming as a single parent for 10 yrs when g/f has a high salary....we struggle on wftc as a couple.
equality has to work both ways!

dag_2

crutches has raised a very good point there. If the benefits and tax credits system starts treating same-sex couples the same way as man-and-woman couples, then a lot of same-sex couples are likely to be worse off as a result. You do not have to be in a civil partnership for the benefits agency or tax credit office to consider you a same-sex couple.

One potential pitfall is for groups of friends living in shared accommodation. Many people in their late teens, twenties and even thirties can't afford self-contained accommodation, so they group together with friends to rent somewhere. If any of them fall ill, or on hard time, and need to claim benefits, they might find that the benefits agency classes them as a same-sex couple with their co-tenants - regardless of whether they're gay, straight, single, dating or coupled - and regardless of who their real partner is, if anyone.

I don't know how the system works - but I'm worried that straight single people could find they have to prove that they're not gay, or otherwise be considered benefit cheats. Nasty.

I sincerely hope the government has thought this one through.

BenefitMaster

If you can document and demonstrate seperate tenancies - so a Tenancy in common not a Joint Tenancy, for example, or separate tenancies for separate rooms with shared facilities, then you are clearly 2 individuals and not a couple, regardless of your sex etc.

These new regs need testing yet, and people should nto worry too much - Gay Rights organisations have said they will be tested.

penrith

Same-sex couples have benefited from being treated as single claimants in the past but they've also been unable to have same-sex marriages etc etc recognised. So there's been advantages and disadvantages to the 'old' system.

I (female) shared a flat with a man a number of years ago and was investigated for living together (which we weren't). I could understand how it was perhaps viewed as unusual that a man and woman would share a flat without there being a sexual relationship. However if the rules are going to change to include same-sex couples to be treated as couples, i am wondering how this is going to work. Is it going to mean that a couple of same-sex hetrosexual friends are going to have to prove they aren't gay? are they going to be treated with the same suspicion i was a few years ago when i shared a flat with a man? Also on the other hand, are you going to find gays/lesbians denying they are a couple because they are much better off financially by being classed as single persons?

I am just wondering how on earth they are going to make this rule change work. Because if an investigator asked a person outright about their sexuality - surely this would be classed as asking a question that are too private.

Scoflo

I was an investigator & I'm pretty interested myself.

Sexuality is no-ones business but their own but it's a raft of criterea which is used to make a decision & sex is not one of them. It ranges from who does the washing, to socialising to holidays.

As a matter of interest (or not as the case may be) the rules for living together were brought in due to greedy offshore workers claiming they were separated from their other halves & benefits being paid.

Fran

scottishflower2000 wrote:

I was an investigator & I'm pretty interested myself.

Sexuality is no-ones business but their own but it's a raft of criterea which is used to make a decision & sex is not one of them. It ranges from who does the washing, to socialising to holidays.

So in a situation where two good friends of the same sex were sharing a flat but you didn't think they had a sexual relationship, would you have called them a couple if they shared food, bills, shopping etc. because it's obviously more economical with time & money and... they're friends so why wouldn't they? Or even an acquaintance or flat mate?

Scoflo

Fran wrote:

So in a situation where two good friends of the same sex were sharing a flat but you didn't think they had a sexual relationship, would you have called them a couple if they shared food, bills, shopping etc. because it's obviously more economical with time & money and... they're friends so why wouldn't they? Or even an acquaintance or flat mate?

I can't answer this as I am no longer an investigator so haven't had the training.

My feeling would be the questions would be the same in potential LT situations, whether same sex or not. Things like whose name the utilities are in, how other people view the relationship, what would happen if the benefit was stopped (ie would the other person support them?) and do they holiday together come into it. It's only my guess at how things will be done.

Many married couples don't have sex but still call themselves a couple so it's a question which is never asked but is often offered by people so is also used in the equasion.

anguk

I've lived with my partner for 20 years but we've never married. We've always been classed as a couple when claiming benefits, however if my partner died I wouldn't be able to claim widows allowance. How come the DSS look upon us exactly the same as a married couple in life but not death?

Scoflo

Many years ago in training I was told if ever I had a question about why something was the way it was the answer was

"to save money"

It's one of the many queries I have had over the years Anguk.