Inheritance And Benefits

[sunny-dave]

Further to this thread

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question1435049.html

But going off at rather a tangent, so worth keeping separate.

It seems (see Guardian article linked below) that the daughter plans to spend the bulk of her newly found inheritance on buying a house "retaining only £20,000 to supplement her benefits".

I can see the attractiveness of this to her, but surely it amounts to deliberately depriving yourself of resources that would make you independent of state benefits for some considerable number of years (possibly until her state pension was payable).

Why is this allowed?

I suppose the state will save some housing benefit, but it would surely be better for her to support herself entirely without recourse to benefits?


http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/28/daughter-wins-164000-decade-long-legal-battle-mother-will-charities)

[sunny-dave]

Try link again :

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/28/daughter-wins-164000-decade-long-legal-battle-mother-will-charities

[Cloverjo]

It would be better if she or her partner would get a job. There seems to be no mention of why they can't. If someone has been awarded that much money, it makes sense to buy a house. Who wouldn't?
Now that they have a house and don't have rent to pay, it would surely make financial sense to climb their way out of the "poverty" of living on benefits.

[TheChair]

Your link is faulty:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/28/daughter-wins-164000-decade-long-legal-battle-mother-will-charities

[TheChair]

I dunno what's goin on. Every time I view a question, there are no answers. Then, as soon as I post an answer, all the pre-existing ones appear.

[Barmaid]

Unfortunately, there has been a lot of quite inaccurate reporting in the press. The full report is here:

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/797.html&query=Mitson&;method=boolean

It doesn't amount to deliberately depriving yourself of resources that would make you independent. Ownership of the property in which you live is not taken into account for the £16,000 benefits cap. It makes sense for C to buy herself a house and then that at least relieves the public purse of having to pay her rent. Indeed this was one of the reasons behind the decision.

The original decision (which was £50,000) would have meant no benefits for a few years until she was below the £16k mark and then back on benefits.

If you can bear to read the full judgement it is quite illuminating.