Friend 'working the system'

[leannarose5]

I have a friend who was in a very sticky spot this time last year. She had gotten pregnant from the result of a one night stand and he didn't want to know. I really felt for her. Obviously, she had to claim some benefits as her wages weren't enough, and rightfully so.

Fast forward a year, she is in a new relationship, they are living together, he treats her child like his own and she helps to run his familys business. She has just found out she is expecting.

She also recently told me that her boyfriends family pay her cash in hand, and she does not declare her wages. She hasn't declared that her boyfriend is living with her despite the fact he is working full time and owns a property which he rents out. She hasn't declared that her daughter's father pays her maintenance. She has now decided to tell me that she can't believe how rich she is going to be once she has her second baby, so she is not planning on declaring it then either.

I know it's none of my business, and I know reporting her wouldn't make me any better off financially (I don't plan to report her) but I can't help but be furious. To the point where I am really struggling to be around her. I am a believer that the welfare system is a safety net for people who really need it, just like she did originally, and people who abuse that are the people who make everyone so anti-welfare and it's really unfair on people who truly need it.

So my question is, would I be unreasonable to avoid her, although she hasn't done anything to me personally, because I disagree with the way she lives her life? I know I sound a bit stuck up and pretentious, but I'm just really not sure how to deal with this.

[MaryWestmacott]

people who don't see this as wrong but just 'clever' and 'getting one over on the system' tend to be very open about what they are doing with others as they just don't consider that other people won't agree and that nice people might consider it immoral enough to report.

OP, I think it's perfectly reasonable to distance yourself from someone when you find out they have morals that are considerably lower than yours, even if what they are doing wrong isn't in any way effecting you. I have distanced myself from a very good old uni friend, because she was the OW, broke up a family. It's not effected me at all, but has me reassess what sort of person she is.

In your case, your friend's casual attitude to stealing and cheating the system would worry me enough to just step away.

I'm not sure if I would report her, but I might point out that a lot of people consider what she's doing as immoral (including you) and that she should start being a lot more discreet about it if she wants to avoid being reported, and that just because she doesn't think it's wrong, doesn't mean that others will agree, it only takes one person to make one phone call for her whole life to come crashing down. (Of course, she'll get really angry at you for suggesting this, and terribly defensive, slagging you off as 'holier than thou' and 'up yourself' - IME, benefit cheats and tax dodgers always try to take the moral high ground against someone else pointing out what they are doing is wrong, they tend to only 'realise' it's wrong when they get reported.)

[cruikshank]

Reporting fraud doesn't make 'the system' better. As pointed out above, claimants don't get more money just because there are fewer of them. The endemic problems with 'the system' have nothing to do with the tiny tiny minority of people who commit fraud.

[Babycham1979]

Sorry, Cruikshank, but as I've already said, a TOTAL SYSTEM benefits cap is here to stay. Therefore, the more theft, the less there remains to go around. Therefore, this is theft, not only from the faceless 'system', but from the poorest in society. It is immoral in the extreme.

[sparklecrates]

Its a risky strategy is all and perhaps it will crash down perhaps it won't. If you are on a fairness ticket then is it fair that some families are wealthier that small businesses get tax breaks that people in the most secure jobs get bigger pensions as well etc etc. There are so many 'systems' that are all played. many small business owners underpay taxes for a few years or stretch out maintainance schedules and will do anything to get comforts able. If this is the only way she can get some comfort in a very stressful situation why not cut her some slack until everything is more equitable. she says 'rich' I say 'had highly vulnerable, precarious and difficult to predict' friends increasing that precariousness and risk is hardly what she needs to feel secure enough to go legal!

[ssd]

I know someone doing similar, she told me she's never short of cash. She claims single parent benefits and lives with her bf who has a good job, but he gets all his mail sent to his mums and says he lives there. She knows shes committing benefit fraud as we told her, but pretends she doesn't understand what we mean.

Another mum I know left her very well paid dh and after splitting the family home she bought a cottage outright. She claims single parent benefits, she is a true single parent, not like above. Her ex gives her £2k maintenance a month, she told me this yet she still has free school meals for her kids, low council tax and many other benefits. She told me she has too much money.

Me and dh both work, receiving £25k a year between us. We pay full council tax, school meals/uniforms, all the usual stuff people need to pay. I've compared in/outgoings with both girls and they are both way way better off then us.

The girls I know must be in the minority, one playing the system the other with a very well paid ex, who does pay her decent maintenance.

But its hard being the low income family, the working poor as its called.

The system seems to chew up and spit up people in need who cant/wont play the system and claim honestly or are disabled or too ill to work, whilst those who really dont need the money but are wily enough to suss out how to work it illegally take advantage.

[ssd]

yet of course the 2 girls I mentioned above are nothing compared to the companies and rich individuals avoiding tax legally....yet sitting at work and listening to someone say how much they receive and what they are doing with it grates on me than a massive tax avoidance scheme from vodaphone etc as somehow its more personal when its someone you know....guess this is how the big companies get away with it, the little people are too busy being pissed of with someone they know rather than a faceless organisation we feel powerless against

[cruikshank]

There's no such thing as single parent benefit. There is Income Support, which is around £70 a week. Then there are child tax credits, which for the first child is around £50, with less for the second. OP, if your 'friend' thinks she is going to be 'rich' with that money, she's in for a rude awakening. And ssd, I'd be interested to know about the 'many other benefits' this 'friend' of yours gets - if she owns the house outright, she won't be getting housing benefit. IS, CTC and council tax support yes, with free school meals and prescriptions, but that's about all I can think of.

[fedupbutfine]

She claims single parent benefits

Sigh. There is no such thing as a 'single parent benefit' or indeed, 'single parent benefits'.

[ArsenicSoup]

Indeed McSqueezy. It does rather read more like a description of how someone thinks dodginess could be occuring, rather than something a claimant would actually say themselves.

[professornangnang]

I have to admit I would probably report someone doing this. I don't think I would be able to just ignore.

[GratefulHead]

I saw nothing in the original post here which said that the friend is bragging about this. Does the OP actually KNOW this friend is still claiming?

[leannarose5]

Yes, She has told me it all as she doesn't seem to think there is a problem... I didn't know maintenance doesn't count and I'm guessing she doesn't know either, as when she was originally chasing him for maintenance she stopped because she thought it would affect her benefits and make her worse off, now he has stepped up and is paying her she told me she isn't declaring it for the same reasons you say it doesn't count... that he's not reliable and it may change.

[MaryWestmacott]

Grateful - the op does say her friend has told her she's still claiming and hasn't declared the changes in her circumstances, nor is she planning on declaring them when she has DC2 with her DP - but the OP assumes she will declare the fact she's had a DC2 to increase her entitlement.

She might not be 'bragging' about it, but is open about what she's doing, which could well be her downfall as people who think this is a fine thing to do generally are rubbish at working out who else won't think it's ok unless the other people have gone on a rant about it.

It's stealing, and rather like the thread a while ago when lots of people admitted to shop lifting (and accused those who said it was wrong of "pearl clutching"), some people think if they can't see the actual victim, then it doesn't count as stealing. That you can still keep your personal image of yourself as a 'generally good person' and steal.

Once you've justified it to yourself as 'everyone does it if they can' and 'Vodafone are worse', then you can forget quickly that others will consider it to be immoral, and forget it's a dirty secret you should be ashamed of, running the risk of being open with someone who reports you.

[leannarose5]

Also she has already been reported, and she has been getting her boyfriend to park round the corner in case her house is being watched, so I'm not the only one she has told!

[Bakeoffcakes]

I'd avoid her, I couldn't be friends with someone so dishonest.

[LegoAdventCalendar]

Report her again and tell them the boyfriend is parking round the corner.

[ssd]

oh for christs sake I know theres no such thing as a benefit called single parent benefit, I mean benefits she can claim as a single parent

cruikshank yes she owns the house outright and gets the benefits you listed as well as £2k a month maintenance, she told me shes getting more thank she needs but takes it since its there

[ssd]

and her kids get EMA and shes doing evening classes which are free

[MaryWestmacott]

Precious - it was a while ago now, but was a bit of an eye opener how many people just don't scan everything though the self checkouts or the 'scan as you go' systems, that the trust in those makes it very easy to steal, then if spotted, do the "oh gosh, silly me, I must have pressed the wrong button." and get away with it. It was interesting in a depressing sort of way.

[ApologibobsCouldNotResist]

if she wasnt your friend, and you came by this information from somewhere else,... would you report her? If you would, then you should i think. Its a hard one, but your head seems to be telling you that you should

[ssd]

where would this be reported though?

[MehsMum]

Oh, don't start me on EMA.

I think it's an essential benefit for kids who couldn't get to the local sixth form college without it (because, yup, you have to pay to get to the one sixth form within a ten-mile radius). However, I do know of one family where I really couldn't work out why they needed it, since their father was earning a good salary and paying maintenance. Had their parents still been together, the kid in question would not have got it, but because he was living with his mother and stepfather (who had been working but was possibly not at the time, I can't recall the precise details), he did. Had he been living with his father and stepmother, there would have been exactly the same amount of money available to those two households, but he wouldn't have got EMA.

Both families enjoyed a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. There was me thinking EMA was people for whom it would make a genuine difference to their prospects. How wrong I was.

[sparklecrates]

I heard she was a witch too..

[RonaldMcDonald]

my advice is that you should mind your own business.

we all disagree with different elements of other people's lives but would be better focussing on living our own

She is obviously doing this for a reason that is her reason. Leave it there.