Fed up of my cousins comments about benefits and UC

[glassor2]

I’m a single mum of two kids, ages 13 and 5. My older son has a relationship with his dad, but my younger son’s dad moved away a couple of years ago and doesn’t see him often-usually once or twice a year. He doesn’t provide any financial support, and since he moves around for work (he used to live in Canada and now lives in Australia), it has been challenging to get child maintenance to chase him.

I work 3-4 days a week (sometimes more if there’s overtime available) and receive a top up from UC. My mum occasionally helps with child care, but she also has a full time job. It can be difficult handling everything on my own, but I manage.

Anyway, I have a family member I'm quite close to, and she often makes comments, not aimed at me, but towards people who claim UC. For example, she mentioned that it's unfair for her to pay almost £300 a month in tax while others can work part time and avoid paying anything (I don’t earn enough to pay tax) and that she has to pay more to subsidise the people that don't. She even told the entire family that she pays almost £400 a month, including national insurance, which made things awkward and nobody knew what to say.

From what I know, she doesn't earn a huge wage, so I can see why it would be frustrating for her to have to pay that much. It's a lot of money. However, it's not our fault, and if she's upset, her anger should be directed at the government, not at those who are rightfully claiming.

Everyone’s situation is different, and some people need help. I never chose to be a single parent, and I can't control the fact that my ex chose to leave and decided not to support his child financially. I'm doing my best, just like many others on UC are.

I don't think she's intentionally trying to upset me, but she is.

AIBU? How do I tackle this?

I knew from the age of 20 upwards that I would never have a child with somebody who was self-employed for exactly that reason.
These types of men need to be ostracised from society and people do need to refuse to have kids with them if they give any thought to who they’re having children with at all which I doubt

I know several men aho became self employed after being employed for a a considerable amount of time. Nothing is set in stone

There is a benefit cap so people receiving the equivalent of £3.5k a month are either in receipt of disability benefits or are working and earning over the minimum income floor.

But if she worked full time and claimed for childcare and still got top up (because her full time wage wouldn't be enough to live on) she'd actually be claiming more than she is now....so how does that benefit anyone?

Yep.

We receive about that much because my son is disabled.

There’s a cap if you don’t work

I think the minimum income requirements are extremely low, and I think that’s what people mainly have a problem with. A couple only has to earn just under £1.5 k a month between them (three quarters of a full time on minimum wage job between them) and if single it’s just over £800 from memory. These low income requirements is what encourages people to work very part time.

It’s the system that’s the problem, they need amending. Obviously people are going to act in their own interests

Crazily low and has been for years was ridiculously low on tax credits too. No wonder people won't work full time when they aren't much better off than working part time and being topped up.

You can give yourself a fighting chance by minimising those risks though, Not having children with somebody who was self-employed in the first place
And secondly, if that’s the game they want to play I would be giving the kids to them. And if they’re lucky, I’ll have them every other weekend. More women need to do that.

So are you saying anyone earning under £35k shouldn't be allowed to have children?

OP, are you sure your cousin isn't blaming people like your ex, which is perfectly reasonable?

Exactly. CMS found my ex partner working a number of times yet as soon as they set up a deduction of earnings he would magically lose his job. The CMS system is flawed they give employers two months to set up these deductions and those absent parents have to be informed that it's happening therefore giving them time to ditch their jobs to avoid supporting their children. Years ago child maintenance was deducted from benefits and single parents were allowed to "keep" about £10 per week of maintenance whilst anything over that was deducted £ for £ off their benefits payments. It was also compulsory as not providing your child's other parents details for maintenance purposes would reduce their benefits by 40%. Obviously it was made too easy by the child maintenance for these absent parents to dodge paying and taking responsibility

@Lastgig in my experience this is exactly the kind of arsehole that is often the kind that makes rude comments about anyone claiming benefits of any kind , despite the fact that it’s because of arses like them that many women have to claim and they are usually of the ‘get a real job mate’ to anyone doing anything involving their brain and thinks the sun shines out Farages arse! I wish karma on them - life simply isn’t as black and white as they think it is - and they would be the first ones claiming if life as they know it imploded.

Isn't this part of the issue though, the whole thing is clearly unsustainable.

And while in the case of the OPs cousin, she is likely only just paying for her contribution to real services she uses herself - roads, health care, etc - it is inevitably going to create significant social distrust when some are getting money to not work while others are paying and struggling to get by.

I think people who tend to naturally favour socialism really underestimate this. Socialism requires high trust, and that has been really undermined not just by people taking the piss, but by people seeing others benefit while they struggle at a pretty similar income level.

@allthemiddlechildrenoftheworld I’m so very sorry for your loss. and yes I think we will be working till your ages too - at least we have a business that’s interesting. Yes we ourselves didn’t plan on having a business go bust in our mid 40s due to 2 suppliers going down owing us large amounts, meaning we had to start again and hence couldn’t buy a home as by the time our credit was ok again we couldn’t get mortgages as ‘too old’ nor have we inherited - lovely in laws still around.
people are very judgemental - I’m actually really socially minded, I’m not right wing but I changed my mind totally on the fact that people will work the system to their advantage and don’t give a shit when a lady working for me wanted only a set number of hours that kept her below being able to claim the maximum but without being hassled - single mum yes ,but her child was 11 . She was as they say ‘all there’ when it came to claiming.

It’s socialism the back door isn’t it? We are living in a socialist state but haven’t realised
it.

If she uses the roads, NHS and schools, she's still "taking" an awful lot more than she's paying into the system. One child in school is £5000-8000 paid by the taxpayer for starters. Giving birth alone costs hundreds if not thousands to the taxpayer.
She can whinge all she wants, but is being massively supported by the state indirectly.

I work full time, pay a lot of tax. Could I that as a single parent of 2 kids, dad not involved/contributing, and no family help with childcare if paid childcare is out of reach? Could anyone?

Sounds like you’re doing your best OP. Anyone could find themselves in more difficult circumstances.
I’ve been a single parent but luckily me ex had the kids 50-50 so I just worked as much as I could on those days , shorter hours on the kids days with my mum helping with pickups. It was hard and I got no benefits but appreciate I couldn’t have done that alone.

Shock! Horror! Not… SOCIALISM?! 😱🙄

Not a strong point about NI this week, when it is clear pension entitlement is in the sights for savings/cuts

I understand that. I work for a small family business where the boss is constantly worried, and if it wasn't for her pension she couldn't manage!
But if a genuine living wage was mandated then all your DMs competitors would have to raise their prices too, so the playing field would still be level.
And we would have to raise the cafe prices, all adding to the COL and eating up some of the increased wages.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but making sure that people who are working hard for a living can actually live on their wages seems a good starting point.

So you regard self-employed people as a bad dating prospect?

Obviously, I think that was the point. I was making very clear.

Each to their own, but not for me back in the day when I was considering who the father of my children would be

Well yeah shock horror, its track record is abysmal.

Presumably you didn’t marry a man who had always been employed, for him to move out then quit his job to become self employed after he was chased for maintenance.