Have I committed fraud?

Only 3 pages in, so I don’t know if it’s been mentioned after that (won’t hurt to mention it again anyway), but a bill was passed by royal assent last week. It’s the Fraud error and recovery bill (fear bill for short), and included in it is that the bank accounts of every single one of us (on benefits or not) are now visible to hmrc, dwp etc any time they want, the banks have to give them access, and they do not have to inform us.
There is no hiding anything electronically any more. They have a system called “connect” which scans bank accounts and flags anything that doesn’t match your personal situation. So if you are on benefits and have any other payments going in from non disclosed sources, instant flag, and investigation triggered. Work for an employer but have any other regular payments going in, flagged and investigation triggered. Sole trader and bank income doesn’t match tax return, flagged etc etc.
It also scans your social media to see if there are any “lifestyle” mismatches, on benefits but posting from luxury holidays abroad or have a brand new car, or Rolex etc…flagged.
they are also linked with Vinted, Etsy eBay etc to crackdown on reseller side hustling.
So they already know about the accounts OP, and are waiting for you to admit to them.

Just leave it op. You must surely have known that writing on here about this would create a huge drama. You haven't done anything wrong and you're not hiding money so no-one will care.

I was describing the principle of the qualification rules, it doesn’t matter that they wouldn’t, the UC requirements would disregard that income as long as it was not saved above the threshold

fraud requires INTENT
if OP has bank accounts only receiving funds which are disregarded there is no intent to defraud
I am the first one to disagree with the way the benefits system is not set up to focus on those really in need
but the current rules do not support the OP committing fraud, she hasn’t. She has not deliberately concealed bank accounts with savings/ in scope income in order to receive benefits

Exactly. @Maddyisqueen simply made that up. 🙄

in which case there is zero harm in declaring all income in that respect

Where? I've read all of OP's posts and whilst she mentions a couple of times her "children's dads" she doesn't mention having a husband (and in her first post says she's a single mum).

Why did the housing minister mot ...or indeed NOT AWARE of her obligations of a second home....remember the title...
HOUSING MINISTER...how do people feel aboutvthat?....no criminal investigation or sanction of salary...
Saying this to this lady will undoubtedly frighten her and cause her a great deal of stress....As previously stated...its not income...probably for all she gets...hence shes not a criminal

He doesn't give her money regularly. OP wrote: "and some help from my dad sometimes." This is perfectly acceptable so long as that help didn't put the amount in those accounts above £6k (the first savings threshold for means-tested benefits). As I said, you don't know what you're talking about.

Can I draw the thread's attention (again!!) to the Child Support Agency SNAFU.

It’s just about declaring accounts. Some things are a disregard, but they need to establish that.

If you’re asking for any sort of means tested top ups, then they want to know it all. 🤷‍♀️

Totally agree
you will get hounded by bailiffs for not paying a £25 parking PCN, but men get away with paying no CMS
I agree it is disgusting that parents getting huge maintenance payments are still entitled to UC, whilst other mums are working full time and get nothing.
but the system is set up on the premise that an awful lot of NRP do not pay or are unreliable, which balances the outliers with huge payments. And nothing is done to force them

Personally I think that child maintenance should be taken into account and see no reason why it isn’t, but given it isn’t you’re not claiming anything you shouldn’t be.

Oh yeah because someone whose getting £1 million a year would really go through the bother for a miserable £800-1000 a month. 🙄

In theory only. There will be Advice for Decision Makers so that an assessment can be made at to whether amounts received as child maintenance is reasonable and does not raise flags as to whether rules are being by passed.

And of course £1 million a year, even in installments would engage the £16k capital limit.

The Child Maintenance disregard, which long predated Universal Credit, arose from the Child Support farrago during the early nineties.

A policy intended to ensure fathers paid for their kids was subverted to instead reduce DHSS expenditure.

Again, child maintenance isn't included in UC calculations.

A friend of mine got £2000 a month maintenance, her mortgage paid, kids at boarding school that cost £80000 per year, they weren’t even with her most of the time
and she still got full UC
I’ve no skin in this game, I’ve never had UC. But stop scaring the OP!

Declare it ~ remember they have authority to contact your bank and request access to all details.
If there's been a breach they'll then take any overpayments back from you, by deducting amount of your monthly award.
Send them all the details and let them work out what is the right amount you should be receiving; trust me will be thorn in your side and headache if you try to fiddle it any other way.

No, as soon as the money came in, you’d be over the 16k savings limit. If it all then disappeared, they do actually look at what you’ve spent it on. If it’s deemed to be deprivation then they treat it as though you still have the money and can close your claim.

I seriously doubt this happens. Why go through all the hassle of claiming UC if you are getting £1 million per year from an ex?

Wow is this true? So someone could have £1 million per year from a wealthy ex, and still claim UC as long as they spent all the money and didn’t let any savings accumulate? That’s insane!

"Gifts" are a bit of a grey area, but generally money given as a gift will count as capital and could make you ineligible for UC if your total capital exceeded £16k. If you tried to hide the money in some way in order to carry on getting UC, they might throw the book at you. At the very least, your UC would stop and you'd have to repay all the UC that you had been overpaid.

But If your mum gave you £10k to buy a car, say, and that took you over either of the limits for a few weeks before you actually bought the car, I suspect that the worst that would happen is that you'd have to repay the amount of UC you'd been overpaid.

The key is "intent": they can (and do) prosecute people for it, but proving intent to maximise benefit payments is tricky and the DWP have a high bar when it comes to the likelihood of conviction. They only tend to prosecute when they are confident they will win and/or when the extent of the offence is so great that they want to make an example, like in the case of gangs opening multiple UC accounts. I suspect that it's also a resource issue for the DWP; it would take a huge amount of staff time to prepare a prosecution, so they have to weigh up whether it's worth it.

I've never known them not to seek recovery of the amount overclaimed because of a failure to declare savings/capital though.

CM is disregarded. As long as it’s not above savings amount - which you said it’s not then there shouldn’t be any issues. Just give them the bank statements for all accounts. I don’t think there’s any need to write a statement to go with it - they’ll phone you and go through it all anyway as part of the review.

Oh I see the benefit police are out today making up the rules. Like everyone else has said money from your Dad and from your exes is disregarded due to it not being a taxable income.
Also its really common for benefits to be overpaid for lots of reasons and for them to set up a payment plan if as little as £10 a month. Mine were overpaid once because I started a new job and had no idea that I would get a decent bonus due to not ever having one before. It was a pain but its all paid back and not one charged me fraud.

Rubbish
if it is all child maintenance and none is saved it does not matter. Not declaring the accounts is a bit silly but the OP will not be in trouble