Help For my elderly MOM

Errata

pesky_princess wrote: »

nothing bigotry about supplying information! These asylum seekers are in fact lucky like i said also! where else would they get all this except our wonderful country and government? :rolleyes:

Accepting your gratuitous comments as informative is problematic.

roy62

This post started out about some poor old women being bullied by a council for spending her own money. Charity begins at home in my life and I would suspect she agrees with me.

roy62

margaretclare wrote: »

She wasn't being bullied by the council, she was simply being told the situation as it is. She had a largish sum of money which, with care, could have lasted her in comfort for a few years. Charity may well begin at home, but that could mean in HER home, not in a family member's home!

And I resent all the stuff about 'poor old women'. As someone else has pointed out, you're not absolved from keeping to the law and doing your own research whatever age you are.

As my daughter frequently says, it's my legs that don't work, not my brain. And I agree with her.

Margaret

So if someone is not as intelligent or clever as you what would you suggest they do.

Debt_Free_Chick

roy62 wrote: »

So if someone is not as intelligent or clever as you what would you suggest they do.

Get advice, I'm afraid. She had to declare the money to the Council in the first place so she knew they were interested in how much money she had.

It's just one of those things "you don't know what you don't know", but having declared the money, alarm bells should have rung if she then simply gave it away. We can't discount that there might have been an information leaflet with the HB form that gave some information about the treatment of capital

There's family involved here too.

I'm not blaming anyone for "not knowing" - we could all be in a similar position when faced with something we know nothing about. We simply have to ask the "what if ....?" questions when dealing with a new situation - especially when it comes to state/council benefits.

mystic_trev

The OP's mother really needs some professional advice. Can I suggest she contacts Citizens Advice ASAP. The ironic thing is, had she not acted the way she's done I think she would have been allowed to retain around £14,000 in savings, and once the balance for rent had been exhausted, be eligible for Pension credits, rent paid and not liable for Council Tax!

roy62

Whats Liz Smith got to do with it ?

roy62

I give in Margaret and concede.
I bet she has a wad of cash under her bed. L.O.L.

swt61

Hello again everyone,

Well here we are back again after a long time!

Well we are still in the same situation as before no rent for my MUM :-(

The last time she applied and was refused was in April 2008 they are now stating in a letter that to their records Mum had £26565.87 as a balance from the sale of the flat in Dec 2006 I dont know where they got this figure from.

Anyway we have been trying to help her out as much as we can but we are struggling ourselves to pay everything but we do help where we can, Mum is now in a situation where she has a Bank account now with an overdraft facility of £400 and after her rent & council tax & other bills are paid she is always living on the overdraft to get by each month.

The council are today sending out a new form for us to complete on her behalf but really do need some personal advice on completeing this we have before contacted the CAB locally but not to sound disrespectfull but we did nt get very far with the advice given at all.

Does anyone know of someone or a company in South Wales that would look at all of this for us on her behalf.

I went over to mums to get all the receipts for everything that she has spent since Dec 2006 as they were being kept seperately but guess what she threw them away even after I had thought they were safe.

I can go back to the Bank i suppose now to get all copy statements for all of this time so it will show monies in & out for the FULL period.

Her Income currently is as follows:-
DWP MONTHLY PENSION £ 573.80
QUARTERLY PAYMENT FROM WIDOWS PENSION £422.45
SHE PAYS OUT RENT £376.92
COUNCIL TAX £51.00

Then all her normal bill like BT & food etc

Many thanks to all for taking the time to read this topic again

Nenen

Hi again... sorry to hear about your mum's plight. Have you tried contacting Age Concern? They might be able to provide more specialist help than CAB. Their website is very good too and includes a benefits calculator (you could try inputting the figures with and without your mum's notional £26,565 to see what benefits she might be entitled to. http://www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/default.asp

I am certainly no expert but I assume they have calculated the figure of £26,565 by taking the £35,000 your mum had when she sold her house and deducting what they consider she would have been given in benefits since then had she not ' deliberately deprived herself of assets' (as dmg24 explained earlier).

Assuming this calculation is recent (i.e. up until the end of August) then, what I think they are saying is, that had your mum not dd herself of assets then she would have received £35,000 - £26565 over the 21 months from 1st Dec 2006 - 31st August 2008. This works out to be approximately £8435 or £401 per month. If dmg is correct (which sounds very logical to me) then she would be expected to continue to spend her 'notional' assets at this level for at least another two years before she would go under the £16000 barrier of notional assets and become eligible for any sort of benefits. Btw I would think that the fact your mum gave away assets until she went just under this £16,000 barrier would make it more likely that they would say she had deliberately deprived herself of assets in order to qualify for benefits.

IMHO the fairest thing would be for your brother to repay your mum about £400 per month (which is what she appears to be losing due to giving him money). If he cannot afford to do this maybe he should sell his house to repay her rather than see his mum in financial difficulty because of him.

Just to reiterate I am NOT an expert and the above calculations are purely based on guesswork given the info I've read on this thread. I strongly suggest you contact Age Concern. Best of luck to you all.

swt61

Mnay thanks for your quick reply i will try age concern for her!

so do I understand right that once a calculation is done to arrive at a date when she should have below £16,000 when in fact she has nothing then & only then will she be able to claim benefits?

With regrds to my Brother selling his house that really is not going to be possible especially in this current climate & there is no way that he can pay back £400 a month as he is struggling like everyone else to keep everything on an even keel so to speak.

I really appreciate your help,

Mnay thanks,

Simon