To think the government can't force women to declare what their dp earns?

[ThreeLittlePandas]

I'm a SAHM and claim child benefit for my 3 children. What my dh earns is his business and the government can go whistle for it if they think that I'm going to declare his earning.

I claim CB not dh

In fact they can fuck the fuck off....

So if you live with a man as husband and wife you cannot claim to be single without committing benefit fraud

I know that, and I strongly disagree with that principle.

The government shouldn't treat any unmarried couple as "living as married" when in fact common law marriage is not recognised under English law (not sure about Scotland).

And it will not force you to live with him either!

How very generous of the government, allowing me to live with whomever I want, in the 21st century!

Destroyedluggage, what is the alternative? Do you think I should have still been allowed to keep all my benefits even when my dp moved in because we were not married? Because Im pretty sure that that would cause married couples to be up in arms! Or that I should have kept my benefits, regardless of my marital status as it should be linked to the individual wage which I dont think is fair neither. Or should benefits be scrapped altogether. I dont think our present system is perfect and the cb cuts have been cack handled but Im glad we do have it and I think most benefits should be household/partner income related.

Why would married couples be up in arms? Marriage has advantages and disadvantages. It isn't mandatory. Likewise if you decide not to get married, the government should respect that and continue to treat you as an unmarried person until you decide otherwise.

In France, for example, the equivalent of JSA is calculated on the basis of how long you have worked and how much you have earned, regardless of marital status or your partner's income. I believe it is a fair system, and of course you're free to turn the money down if you feel you, or your household, can do without it.

Married couples are taxed jointly (everyone has to do a tax return in France, unlike in the UK). So if there are children, it's the household income that gets adjusted, not one individual's or another's. (I'm not sure how it works for single or divorced parents - I guess they file individually and get taxed and/or get benefits accordingly.)

Some people see it as backwards and get all up in arms over things like joint tax returns for married couples, or tax breaks. I don't have a problem with married and unmarried couples being treated differently, as long as the different treatment is consistent, as opposed to which way the wind blows or what suits the government's pocket.This way you can do the maths and decide whether marriage makes sense in your situation or not. Then you get the advantages and disadvantages you signed up for.

What I disagree with is the mentality behind things like JSA - oh look, you have a rich boyfriend, go and ask him to support you even though you had been working and paying NI for 25 years when you were made redundant. And if he doesn't want to, more fool you for living with him. Of course we won't count you as married when it comes to inheritance or other things that may work out to your benefit, but if we can save a quid then you're as good as married.

I guess there will always be people who abuse the system, whatever system you design, but there are principles that just irk me and this is one of them.

common law marriage is not recognised under English law

Yes, because there is no such thing.

But if a couple chooses to live together as though they are married, the law recognises that. That's why, regardless of whether you are married or not, you must claim means-tested benefits as a couple. You will receive the couple rate where there is one, and they will take both of your incomes and savings into account when working out if you are entitled to benefits.

Until recently this has only been true of male-female couples, but the law changed in 2005 and same-sex couples now have to make joint claims too.

However, you'll be pleased to know that this does not apply in relation to benefits based on NI contributions which treat you as two separate individuals.

You will be entitled to Home Responsibilities Protection in the usual way until your youngest child reaches 12 years old. However if you spend long periods not working and do not qualify for HRP, you cannot rely on your partner's NI contributions for pension purposes.

You will not be entitled to bereavement allowance or bereavement benefit either.

If two couples, one married and the other not, are earning similar amounts between both of them, but one couple was receiving a substantial amount of benefits on top of their wages on the basis that were not married, I think it would be pretty naive to think that the married couple would not be a little .

It's nothing to do with what married couples think or don't think.

Means-tested benefits are based on your means, and if you live as a couple then the incomes and assets of both individuals are calculated as though they are a couple.

Why on earth wouldn't they be?

They may be a little - so what. They can always remain unmarried and just live together if they want to keep that extra benefit. Whereas currently co-habiting but unmarried UK couples cannot opt for individual means testing even if they want to.

Olgaga - last I had the misfortune of dealing with JSA (around 2008 by my recollection), they did ask about partners and their income even for the contribution-based part of JSA. That was when I decided it wasn't worth the bother applying even though I turned out to be eligible.

Why on earth wouldn't they be?

Because they have chosen not to marry and not to share their finances and therefore do not constitute a "household" but are two independent individuals?

I just think that benefits should be seen to be fair, and I dont think what destroyed luggage is saying would be seen as such.

Or it would seem that they were being penalised for being married iyswim

Oh, and kickmewhenimdown - your scenario of married couples being a bit is unlikely because more often than not, being married works out a better deal than not being married anyway.

The important difference is that nobody would insist on counting you as a "household" and forcing you to declare an unmarried partner's income if you aren't, in fact, married.

I think perhaps in the long run, financially, if a relationship goes pear shaped or the unexpected happens, then married couples have more protection that unmarried. But on a day to day basis, financial responsibilities for home and children etc are not that much different for married couples than they are for unmarried couples, and I really dont believe that in general married couples would be happy to be counted as a household and receive less benefits than an unmarried couple who would not be counted as household.

Kickme, married couples don't receive less benefits, if anything they receive more.

But it's not about who receives more, it's about the freedom to make your own choice, and your individual contributions being recognised, especially in situations when the law doesn't guarantee you any help from anybody else.

I dont think thats how the general public would take it if unmarried couples were able to claim ctc/wtc/cctc on an individual wage (presumably the low earner) whilst a married couple with the same household income would not be entitled as they earn too much. What are the benefits that married couples receive that are more than unmarried which would offset this?

But it's not about who receives more

maybe in an ideal world but you just have to look at the amount of threads on mn about how much people get or dont get in benefits and how much bunfights and argy bargy it causes to realise that when it comes to benefits people are bothered about what other people get or dont get.

I don't really know about the benefits of being married in the UK.

But again, this is not the point I'm making. If being married doesn't hold any advantages to you, you can always decide not to get married. Simples.

What I do know is that in France, being married is an advantage over just living together in some cases (like income tax calculations). There are situations in which marriage would a disadvantage (like being responsible for each other's debt.) You look at your own situation and weigh up the pros and cons and decide.

And then there are a whole lot of cases when it doesn't matter (like the JSA-equivalent), because then you're assessed as an individual whether you're married or not.

I think there is a difference of the prospect of being married not holding any advantages, and the prospect of being married actually causing you to be at a disadvantage, which i think is what you are proposing. I dont think there are any advantages to being married in the UK, other than what I have stated, but Im not married so obviously not clued up in that area.

and the prospect of being married actually causing you to be at a disadvantage, which i think is what you are proposing.

I am fairly confident that in most European countries there are disadvantages to marriage as well as advantages, except maybe people are not necessarily aware of them. Individual situations vary from couple to couple, what is an advantage to me might work out a disadvantage to you.

Again, this is not the issue. You can always do your homework before deciding to get married.

It's a lovely theory destroyed, but the finances are whack.

I'm lucky enough not to know exactly what a single not working mother of 3 under 5s would get in payments - it's not enough to live in luxury, but it is a substantial sum of cash - just enough for the family to live on in fact.

If that sort of money was available on request to any SAHP who chose not to marry, including the girlfriends of Premiership footballers, then the marriage rates would plummet overnight, because only the very rich, the extremely principled, the determinedly childfree and the unusually religious would turn down that sort of money if it was on offer legally. Mothers would burst into tears on hearing that their daughters were engaged, sobbing "Does that mean I'm never going to have grandchildren?"

The birth rate would also shoot up (see all the threads about "how many children would you have if money was no object") and shortly after that the country would go bust. Alternatively those sort of benefits would be cut back so far that actual single parents with no other support would starve.

Dilysprice, you have managed to articulately state what i have been been trying to dither on about in my last few posts :)

It's not a theory. What I described is how it works in France. Admittedly, the finances are indeed whack, I won't argue that point.

If that sort of money was available on request to any SAHP who chose not to marry

There is no "money available on request". JSA, as the French equivalent, is paid to people who are eligible (usually you need to have worked over a certain period of time and not left your employment due to your own passing fancy but redundancy etc.)

Birth rates are, indeed, relatively high in France compared to other European countries. I don't think they're going out the roof though. Raising children is still a significant financial burden on any couple, I believe, and a massive drop in your standard of living. Marriage rates, I think, are on the decline, like pretty much everywhere else in Europe.

I'm not sure what you mean by mothers bursting into tears over never having grandchildren.

If you are a non-working single parent of very young children in France, what benefits are available to you? Do cohabiting SAHP's get exactly the same amount?

And the mothers in tears would be because if on marriage you relinquished the right to (say) 50 thousands pounds in benefit claims (over the life of the children) then engagement would pretty much act as a statement that you weren't going to have kids.

I have no idea about benefits related to children, because I don't have any kids, Dilys. I only know a bit about taxation, and it works like this: married couples are taxed together, which is usually an advantage when there's a big disparity in income, as tax after the combined total tends to work out less than if the same total would be taxed twice as two separate lots of income. By that logic it is probably better to be married rather than unmarried if one partner earns significantly less than the other, which would include stay-at-home parents, or parents that only work part-time and therefor earn much less than their partners.
Then there are tax breaks if you have dependant children. Married couples filing together would obviously get this jointly. I suppose unmarried parents filing as individuals would get it as individuals.

The only stay-at-home parents I know are mothers with very high earning husbands. Which makes me thinks that it isn't the state benefits, whatever they may be, that encourage them to stay at home. But that's just my own circle of aquaintances.