Possibly messed up with UC, advice please?

[Namechanging110]

I'm not sure how much I should be panicking over this but the whole thing is quite new to me and I'm so scared of getting it wrong because financially things are tight as they are.

I split from my ex husband a while ago (bad situation and me and child ended up homeless for quite some time) and then I began claiming uc for childcare costs as a lone parent wft as my now ex husband was no longer involved outside of paying some maintenance.

I've since been able to get 'divorced' but he's completely refused to engage with solicitors so I've not yet been able to get a financial agreement in place meaning I can't take money from our joint account because I don't know what will be his and what will be mine. We also had a house which was in his name and was owned by him before we met. I was never added to the deeds etc. I paid my portion of the mortgage to him and didn't cover any bills relating to the ownership of the house directly and am not named on those. It will eventually sell but its not 'my' house if you see what I mean.

When I set up uc I declared all of my personal (individual) bank accounts but they're now saying I should also have declared my sons bank account (its in his name, completely separate and I can only pay into it - I can't withdraw from it he will need to do that at 18) and now I'm thinking I should have declared the joint accounts as well even though they have been untouched since our split and I've been told by my solicitor not to touch it if I'm able to use my personal account anyway.

I'm going to declare everything now but I'm absolutely shitting myself and worried ill need to pay money back if they include what's in the joint account (most of which is joint savings for our son that I've been told I can't close and move into the other savings account in his name or access until financial arrangements are signed off - not that i would anyway as i see it as his money) which would put me over the threshold for uc. I'd probably still have been entitled but at a much more reduced rate from the beginning.

Are they going to look at this as 'my' money? 90% of it will eventually go to my son's own account and is currently in a separate 'pot' under his name attached to the joint account that I've paid all my child benefit into prior to the split (i then set up the other account for him) but the rest that's in the joint account if we agreed to split it equally would only work out at a couple of hundred each, it's not a lot of money and wouldn't put me over threshold if that makes sense?

I'm just so unclear on how this all works and when I spoke to uc on the phone before setting up a claim, I was told verbally this wasn't "my" money and I didn't need to declare it but now I'm thinking that was wrong info or that I've misunderstood- at the time I was completely floored with a shock breakup in a traumatic way so I probably wasn't in the best space to be making decisions on anything or processing information I was just surviving.

Can anyone please give me advice (and talk me down).

This would have made it worse...! Diversion of money that would have been child maintenance but paid into child's account because of benefit entitlement rules- even if you had diverted it successfully this way, without UC flagging it, that's where you will get opinions about deliberately getting around the rules. The account would have had to be completely untouchable by you to be able to say it was for your child when they became an adult. And that has limits too.

Why should you use the child's father's contributions to pay for your child's living costs when UC (the taxpayer) will cover them instead? Is that what you are saying?

(If you haven't been claiming for long and your actual funds aren't far over the limit, you'll have to repay, but it won't be huge).

Sorry for your situation but just be totally honest and straightforward from this point.

I understand you wanting to save money for your son, and you should be able to and can do this. However...not when claiming benefits. They will just see it as you are choosing to put money away (regardless if it's your sons account or not) instead of using it to live on, and to make up for that you are asking them for extra money to live on, and it doesn't work like this. This is how they will see it from their perspective which I'm sure you already know by now.
I don't think you did it on purpose, so just see what they say. Overplaying it all in your head is making the situation much worse for yourself, so just wait out.
But how the system works is you should be using every penny to survive, not put it away into a saving fund.

Yeah those things count as assets even if you are not using them now. They would tell you to sell the property and live off the proceeds before you start claiming UC.
You must have under 16k in total, and they take money off you if you have above 6k. So you could have your son's savings but only if it plus your own assets were less than that amount.

I don't think you'll get in trouble per se, but presumably they'll make you pay it back if you were never actually entitled.

Uc will give at least six months ( sometimes longer) for someone to sort out selling a jointly owned property after a split. As long as oyu can show it is on the market or steps being taken for the other person to buy you out then it can be disregarded for Uc purposes. They do expect the house to be sold but do give time for this to be done and will pay UC in the meantime.

Ah yes, that is true. I wasn't sure if OP also owned the property she's currently living in, as I think that changes it? If it's the only property then yeah, the house sale money can sit in your account for upto six months if it's being used to buy a new property.

Tbh moving the money into a Lisa looks more suspicious as its trying to minimise money in your name to claim benefits

This is what I'm also worried about now as I'm now thinking I actually should have just left it as it was and just let them tell me what to do. What a fucking mess. I thought that was the 'right' thing to do.

I don't own where I'm living I'm renting. I can't force my husband to sell, we've been trying to get him to engage for the past year but he's still living there and I can't sell out from under him and I know he's not in a position to buy me out so it will have to sell eventually

Yeah, that's tricky. I hope you do manage to make him sell.

You just know now that it wasn't. So now bring this down a bit and try to get some perspective. How much over £6k - in total - did you have across all accounts that you had access to at the time of claim (or during your review)? Then work out what that could mean in terms of an overpayment. Get pen and paper out. Anything over £6k would have been deducted as £4.35 per £250 (not including the £6k, just the excess) from your UC payment. Use that as a rough estimate. Usually they reduce the deductions over time when people naturally use their savings, but I'd go on worse case scenario here and apply the deduction to each assessment period.
They may or may not apply a civil penalty- sometimes £50, sometimes more but that is literally something you cannot predict. At least the above will give you an idea.

Literally no-one ever fraudulently claiming benefits says 'yeah I knew athat was what I was doing and shouldn't have done that'

Everyone's got an excuse about not knowing or being confused or being mentally unwell or traumatised or whatever..

The authorities have heard it all before and don't care about the excuses.

Do the right thing now and suck up the consequences.

I’m honestly sickened by the amount of people who think it’s ok to act like the OP. Just because you can game the system and are “entitled” to benefits doesn’t mean morally you should. We have a JISA for our daughter but can’t afford to squirrel away hundreds every month because as a net contribution household 50% of my husband’s hard-earned wages go on tax, to subsidise your husband picking and choosing his maintenance responsibilities depending on what you fancy hiding from DWP whilst claiming UC. make it make sense!

Does no one have any sense of pride/personal accountability anymore?!!

If I owe anything I will repay in full, the idea of being in debt over this makes me feel sick.

I completely understand the perspective on this and I totally see now why this has created such an issue and why it looks so bad but it honestly wasn't intentional at the time. I'm very aware now that I've fucked up and made a mistake with this so I'm going to uc off my own bat and identifying the issue with them. I just am trying to get clear advice and guidance as I've phoned a number of advice services and phoned uc and spoken to them about it and noone has been able to give me a clear answer on what is 'mine' and what isn't which is why I'm completely confused, i have different people telling me different things. I've also contacted the isa provider and explained the situation to see if I can extract the savings to make a repayment if I'm owing with that but they've said theres no way. I will do everything I can to make this right.

I think most tax payers who take nothing from the system are sickened by it all tbh. The whole system that allows all this is a mess. It should be a genuine safety net but nothing more.

You say it makes you feel sick that you may have over claimed and yet you are continually on this thread saying things like ‘if I’d known I’d have got the ex to pay the minimum and save the rest for our son’ which is still cheating the system . Just be honest , you’re trying to cheat the system and think it may have backfired , people would be more sympathetic if you are honest .

Exactly this. The whole thing is so disingenuous!

If you feel that bad over it and you don’t “need” your ex’s maintenance to help with day-to-day living costs then why not end your claim? Don’t take anything from the state.

I think we all know you won’t do that though. Why pay your own way when the benefits system is there to use and abuse as you see fit, eh?

What my ex decides to pay or not pay is not in my control. Which is why I've probably (obviously completely wrongly) been looking at this as if its separate money for me and for my son based on my exes verbal arrangement rather than money for me. I always understood child maintenance to be the child's but obviously managed by the parent for things they'd need so I've never looked at it as 'mine' but I see now that this was wrong and I shouldn't have been looking at it in this way. I know I've messed up here but I did not intentionally set out to try and screw the system. I completely see what you're saying (and everyone else) and I feel really embarrassed about this.

I'm volunteering this info to UC because I've just realised it's an issue. It's not like I've been 'caught out' - I've gone to them and pointed out that this might be an issue. And I'm trying to work out on here what that is going to mean for me.

Yet will still continue to claim?? Despite feeling sickened and embarrassed?

UC should be a safety net, not “extra” free money. Honestly this is why my husband wants us to leave the UK….

Actually, if the OP closes her claim now it will cause definite suspicion and quite literally is not a good idea. For one thing, the DWP would be looking to make immediate deduction from the claim to start repayment once any overpayment has been decided. Closing the claim in these circumstances will compound the issue.

So I spoke again with uc and got more clarity. It turned out that I actually had declared all joint accounts when I opened the claim including any money we had saved for my child. Like I said, very bad head space at the time of applying and couldn't remember what I'd done or not done.

So they knew about the joint account and kids savings from the beginning and had discounted those since its money in dispute and said it was fine that money had been moved into the isa as its still in my sons name. They also told me that I don't need to declare anything to do with the house until there is money actually paid to me at which point I will have 6 months to use it on a new property before its taken into account. There is a small amount I'll need to repay from money I had saved for my son but it's actually only taken me over the £6k limit for a couple of months and is nowhere near as bad as I had got myself into a total spiral over thank god.

It's good that you were proactive and now know exactly where you stand.

I really appreciate everyone who posted with advice and in good faith, even with different perspectives. I feel like I understand things much better now and at least I'll soon be on a straight edge with it.