I was talking to my sister today. Love my sister, don’t begrudge my nieces and nephews etc. However, I find this benefits loophole ridiculous, though I appreciate she doesn’t make the rules and is just claiming what she can. Anyway.
My sister has just broken up with her partner, they have two kids together. He is a high earner and child maintenance will be £1,200 a month (via the child maintenance service).
She earns £900 a month working part time, school time hours.
She has just put in a claim for benefits and she has been told she will receive £1,400 a month. This includes housing benefits, income support, child benefit. It doesn’t include discounts from council tax etc.
This brings her total monthly income to £3,500 and some change (I have given rounded figures). Completely tax free. I had assumed her benefits would be reduced as she gets a high amount of child maintenance. But no. They don’t count it. She admits herself that her monthly income is massive and she did first assume that the children’s maintenance would warrant some sort of deduction.
As I said, fair play to her as she is only doing what the system allows. However, I can’t help but feel this is a huge loophole, and there should be some sort of cap i.e once you are getting £500+ a month in child maintenance, it starts to affect benefits? And I realise her ex could lose his job at any point or stop paying, but if that happens surely benefits could reassess at that point…
It just seems ludicrous that someone can be getting that level of monthly income from maintenance & benefits, completely tax free. I’m sure it can’t just be my sister in this position.
AIBU?