Moving ON to Contribution Based ESA

My partner currently on income-related ESA as she suffers from a chronic illness and is unable to work. We'd like to move in together but as soon as we do she will lose her ESA as my income will be taken into account.



It would be very difficult to support her on my wage alone and if we were to add children into the equation it would be very tight indeed. We've checked various scenarios in benefits calculators and it doesn't look like we'd stand to get much support at all.



The only way forward I can see is if she were to move onto contribution based ESA. We've looked at a variety of options for employment and there's simply nothing that she'd be able to do at this point to build up NI contributions to qualify.


We had looked into the possibility of registering her as a Sole Trader after they removed her income-related ESA and making voluntary NI contributions until such a time as she qualifies. Does anyone know if this can be done?


I'm really trying to think outside the box but it seems like she's very much backed into a corner.