AIBU? Hiding money to obtain benefits.

If there is no love lost between you I would report her to the DWP for fraud

I don't understand how the daughter can declare herself homeless. There will be records of her council tax payments and ownership on the land registry. I was once genuinely homeless (with children) and I had to jump through many hoops to prove that I was homeless. The daughter in your anecdote would fall at the first hurdle. Eventually, I was offered bedsit accommodation (for three of us) in a rundown former motel about 30 miles from where my children went to school. Fortunately, somebody lent me some money and acted as a guarantor so that I could rent privately.

I have a neighbour who now has her daughter and 2 grandchildren staying with her over the summer in her caravan. Her daughter has a good house but has just declared herself homeless because she wants a new house and can sell the old one that she is now bored with. She is a nurse so the council are obliged under law that she gets priority on homeless listing as a front line worker plus she has a boy/girl so needs 3 bedrooms. She has already spotted a new development that she 'fancies' living in and knows that there will be council apportion within the development. It is very annoying what people will do and get away with.

Delila

This excludes housing costs as the recipient is entitled to housing benefit and council tax support.

Which is considerably more than a single person of working age would receive in the same circumstances.

Delila

DaisyAnne, I’ve done the calculation necessary to turn separate weekly and 4-weekly payments into one calendar-monthly figure, ie:

Weekly PC x 52 divided by 12

Plus

4-weekly Pension x 13 divided by 12.

I know there are some pensioners in poverty - I'm one of them, by the way. I'm talking about averages. There are about 11 million pensioners in the UK. About 2 million of them are living within the official definition of poverty, but the other 9 million are not. Official figures show that the average pensioner is better off (income and wealth) than the average working age family with children after housing costs. Please note that I'm talking about averages.

What really annoys me is that pensioners complain about pensions and when they get something, they seem to forget everybody else or, even worse, they blame everybody else for their own poverty and relate endless tales about how bad life was in the past.

It's how identity politics works. Buy off one group - in this case pensioners - with reinstatement of the triple lock and £500 Winter Fuel Allowance - and then say giving anybody else a bit extra would be inflationary. It's nonsensical economics, but it keeps core voters happy. I would prefer state help to be based on income/wealth not on age, but that doesn't suit the government because it wouldn't be able to create division and curry favour with one demographic - and I'm sure everybody's seen pictures of elderly hands counting out pennies in stock photos and felt sorry.

Using a Deed of Variation you can pass an inheritance on to someone if you feel you don't want or need it. This is quite legal. Having said that doing it simply to retain state benefits is underhand. Is she getting money on the sly from this inheritance ?

disgraceful, that also applies to the world of the rich who squirrel away an estimated 30 trillion in offshore accounts,the criminal world, that number is unknown,there is an estimated 2 billion a year in benefit fraud versus 100's billions in corporate fraud. government fraud etc etc arrest the real crooks, leave the ordinary people alone who are mostly just surviving, and prop up a poverty industry also costing billions.

Deedaa That's a sad story. I get where your MIL was coming from, and don't see her as a cheat at all. The council would have been better served searching out and fining those who deliberately defrauded them.

growing not growig!

kittylester
My husband had dementia which at the time was not classed as an illness. He was in care for the last seven months of his life and died in 2005. We were paying £1000 a week for his care then, and during that time he was assaulted by one of the carers and the side of his face was black and blue and his lip split. After he died some solicitors offered to fight for his medical care portion of the fees to be refunded. We have just this last month been awarded £25,000 by the court, which by the time the solicitor was paid was reduced to £19,000. It was NOT the money that I fought the case for. If a highly intelligent man, Financial Director and Secretary of a medium sized House Builders is reduced to crawling about the floor, doubly incontinent and having to be fed, all caused by plaques growig in his brain is not an illness what is it?

There are so many cheats about.
some cheat all their working lives and accure vast sums of money.
I really don't know what the correct word for this behaviour is

This excludes housing costs as the recipient is entitled to housing benefit and council tax support.

DaisyAnne, I’ve done the calculation necessary to turn separate weekly and 4-weekly payments into one calendar-monthly figure, ie:

Weekly PC x 52 divided by 12

Plus

4-weekly Pension x 13 divided by 12.

Delila

Growstuff, I understand you’re talking about averages, but here’s a genuine, not unusual, individual case.

Pension income net of housing costs: £671 per month, including Pension Credit guarantee.

Wealth indeed!

However, this is straying from the OP’s question.

I assume this is a single person Delila? That certainly looks odd. Pension Credit is usually paid weekly and includes any housing costs. State Pension, on the other hand, is usually paid weekly or four weekly. I wonder where the monthly comes in?

If they are only receiving one amount, weekly or 4 weekly, then I would suspect that they are not getting Pension Credit and that may need to be chased up.

My MiL had £20,000 which had been left by my FiL. He didn't leave a will. She said it was for DH but she kept it in one of her bank accounts. I knew she'd got a little money saved but had no idea of the amount involved until the Inland Revenue caught up with her. She was living in a council bungalow on benefits so you can imagine how well this went down with the council!! She had to pay them £18,000 and it took a lot of diplomacy on our part to keep her out of court ( She was 80 so I don't think they would really have prosecuted) We got Power Of Attorney and took over her finances but to the day she died she couldn't understand what she'd done wrong. As far as she was concerned that was her son's money and the council had stolen it! Heaven knows how my FiL had ever saved that much anyway, he only had pretty low paid jobs. It seemed better not to delve too deep.

Doodledog Hear, Hear.

Agreed, both of you. I am also fed up with generalisations, snide digs and accusations. I have paid NI since I was 16, and am still doing so in my 60s. I do feel entitled to a pension, and I also feel that it should not be reduced because I also paid into an occupational one. I wasn't able to do that until I was 37 (because of being a woman when I was younger, being on short-term contracts when I qualified, as is usual in academia, despite working full-time and paying full NI all along). I don't have much of an occupational pension, but I see no reason why the fact that it exists should mean that I should give up my state one.

Calling people 'entitled' suggests that they want something they haven't paid for or worked towards - pensions do not come under that umbrella, as entitlement to them is based on contributions made throughout your working life. Being 'entitled' to a pension one day was the basis on which we paid in - why is it wrong with expecting that to be honoured?

Well said Delila

I was divorced at 30, after 11 years in what became an increasingly miserable marriage. I’d paid full stamp till I gave up work as we did when a baby was born. I managed to get a prof qualification and started paying into the pension scheme at 32. I paid additional amounts throughout. I paid ‘full stamp’ from age 17 with a two year gap when stay at home mum.
I’d be so cross if done bright spark decided I shouldn’t get my state pension because I have one from my employment

It’s this lazy lumping together of whole sections of the population into groups, and labelling them things like entitled pensioners, the lazy feckless young of today (there’s a rich seam of insults to be mined there), illegal immigrants, etc etc, ad nauseam, that I find offensive.

It’s so divisive. Divide and rule - it’s working very well for this government.

Maybe I should give up on Gransnet because what I personally see is an awful lot of very entitled posters.

Perhaps you could explain who and what you mean by this, as this is the sort of comment that hurts a lot of people who think you are talking about them.

I don't know what is 'entitled' about feeling that it would be unfair to have the state pension means tested based on income from an occupational pension that was contributory, but who knows? Maybe it wasn't a dig at me, but at someone else?

As for voting Tory - it will be a warm January before I do that.

Growstuff, I understand you’re talking about averages, but here’s a genuine, not unusual, individual case.

Pension income net of housing costs: £671 per month, including Pension Credit guarantee.

Wealth indeed!

However, this is straying from the OP’s question.

henetha

You have to be joking, growstuff, I hope. Entitled pensioners ! And if the Tories are trying to buy my vote they are going to be disappointed.

No, I'm not joking henetha.

I was a member of GN before I reached pension age and I saw for myself how little understanding there was for people of working age (which at 65 I still was).

Good posts DaisyAnne.

You have to be joking, growstuff, I hope. Entitled pensioners ! And if the Tories are trying to buy my vote they are going to be disappointed.

Growstuff How old are you? I find your offensive remarks that just assume that older people will vote for Johnson, just because he has increased our pensions quite beyond the pale.

Older people are as intelligent, thoughtful, and as given to deep political consideration as any other group in the country, and to think we would vote for a party just because they throw us a little bone with ribbon on it is offensive in the extreme.

What makes it more cutting, is that the person not just thinking but expressing these views, is a long time GN member, with whom we have had happy conversations with over a long period of time.

To think that she sees us all as just turkeys voting for Christmas is deeply disillusioning.