Have I committed fraud?

[Boxedin2431]

I am a single mum to three.

I have a UC review and bank statements are due.
I have three bank accounts and two I have not declared.
The two bank accounts I have not declared get child maintenance paid in from my children’s dads, respectively.
I have not had any other income apart from the maintenance and some help from my dad sometimes.
i transfer money between all three.
Two bank accounts are in my birth name, the third is in my middle name.

Am I in trouble when I declare them?

I only have UC, child benefit into the one I have declared.
i have child maintenance into one bank account and another child maintenance into the other bank account.

Shall I include 6 month statement for all three?

For anyone checking bank accounts, it's quite obvious that you have more than one. They are not stupid and will ask you to provide all bank accounts.

'and some help from my dad sometimes.'

which bank account is that paid into ?

Please stop writing utter rubbish on a subject that you clearly know nothing about.

It doesn’t matter. You’re allowed to receive financial help from family. It isn’t counted. And it doesn’t matter how many bank accounts you have. You don’t have to tell them all your accounts when you apply for UC. They only care about accounts when they do the review, which they are now doing. And OP will upload statements from all of them. There is no fraud here.

She didn’t need to declare child maintenance or help from family. She didn’t need to declare several banks accounts. You only do that during your review. There is absolutely no fraud or anything wrong here.

UC will look at the statements, ask a few questions about payments or transfers and she just needs to confirm that it’s child maintenance and gifts from family. Job done.

@snoopythebeagle

She has done nothing wrong.

You’re allowed to receive financial help from family. It isn’t counted. And it doesn’t matter how many bank accounts you have. You don’t have to tell them all your accounts when you apply for UC. They only care about accounts when they do the review, which they are now doing. And OP will upload statements from all of them. There is no fraud here.
She didn’t need to declare child maintenance or help from family. She didn’t need to declare several banks accounts. You only do that during your review. There is absolutely no fraud or anything wrong here.
UC will look at the statements, ask a few questions about payments or transfers and she just needs to confirm that it’s child maintenance and gifts from family. Job done.

I would go with statements going back as far as your original UC claim. Your bank should be able to provide these.

You haven't committed fraud. But you have not declared all your accounts for some reason and this is likely to trigger a further investigation. At this point I would simply provide however many months of bank statements they've asked for, for all accounts. You don't need to explain anything.
If you've gone over £6000 and not declared that, then you'll have to repay overpayments.

@Bobiverse while I agree with the thrust of your post applicants for UC are, or at least are now, asked about all their bank accounts.

They'll need the sort code and account numbers for the account their UC is to be paid into and the balance. They'll then be asked for any/every other account for which they'll be asked the balance and last four digits of the account number.

They're also asked about ISAs Crypto Assets and a whole gamut of other types of capital.

They will disregard the CM, it doesn’t count in UC assessment

they only want to know that you’re not secretly earning stacks, or have more than £6k in savings

declare the accounts, nothing will happen.

if you want more tailored advice, go and make an appointment with Citizens Advice

Child maintenance is disregarded. You could have a million pounds a month going in from their dads, it’s irrelevant

Why? If it really is just maintenance going in it will not matter

Rubbish
if it is all child maintenance and none is saved it does not matter. Not declaring the accounts is a bit silly but the OP will not be in trouble

Oh I see the benefit police are out today making up the rules. Like everyone else has said money from your Dad and from your exes is disregarded due to it not being a taxable income.
Also its really common for benefits to be overpaid for lots of reasons and for them to set up a payment plan if as little as £10 a month. Mine were overpaid once because I started a new job and had no idea that I would get a decent bonus due to not ever having one before. It was a pain but its all paid back and not one charged me fraud.

CM is disregarded. As long as it’s not above savings amount - which you said it’s not then there shouldn’t be any issues. Just give them the bank statements for all accounts. I don’t think there’s any need to write a statement to go with it - they’ll phone you and go through it all anyway as part of the review.

"Gifts" are a bit of a grey area, but generally money given as a gift will count as capital and could make you ineligible for UC if your total capital exceeded £16k. If you tried to hide the money in some way in order to carry on getting UC, they might throw the book at you. At the very least, your UC would stop and you'd have to repay all the UC that you had been overpaid.

But If your mum gave you £10k to buy a car, say, and that took you over either of the limits for a few weeks before you actually bought the car, I suspect that the worst that would happen is that you'd have to repay the amount of UC you'd been overpaid.

The key is "intent": they can (and do) prosecute people for it, but proving intent to maximise benefit payments is tricky and the DWP have a high bar when it comes to the likelihood of conviction. They only tend to prosecute when they are confident they will win and/or when the extent of the offence is so great that they want to make an example, like in the case of gangs opening multiple UC accounts. I suspect that it's also a resource issue for the DWP; it would take a huge amount of staff time to prepare a prosecution, so they have to weigh up whether it's worth it.

I've never known them not to seek recovery of the amount overclaimed because of a failure to declare savings/capital though.

Wow is this true? So someone could have £1 million per year from a wealthy ex, and still claim UC as long as they spent all the money and didn’t let any savings accumulate? That’s insane!

No, as soon as the money came in, you’d be over the 16k savings limit. If it all then disappeared, they do actually look at what you’ve spent it on. If it’s deemed to be deprivation then they treat it as though you still have the money and can close your claim.

I seriously doubt this happens. Why go through all the hassle of claiming UC if you are getting £1 million per year from an ex?

Declare it ~ remember they have authority to contact your bank and request access to all details.
If there's been a breach they'll then take any overpayments back from you, by deducting amount of your monthly award.
Send them all the details and let them work out what is the right amount you should be receiving; trust me will be thorn in your side and headache if you try to fiddle it any other way.

A friend of mine got £2000 a month maintenance, her mortgage paid, kids at boarding school that cost £80000 per year, they weren’t even with her most of the time
and she still got full UC
I’ve no skin in this game, I’ve never had UC. But stop scaring the OP!

Again, child maintenance isn't included in UC calculations.

In theory only. There will be Advice for Decision Makers so that an assessment can be made at to whether amounts received as child maintenance is reasonable and does not raise flags as to whether rules are being by passed.

And of course £1 million a year, even in installments would engage the £16k capital limit.

The Child Maintenance disregard, which long predated Universal Credit, arose from the Child Support farrago during the early nineties.

A policy intended to ensure fathers paid for their kids was subverted to instead reduce DHSS expenditure.

Oh yeah because someone whose getting £1 million a year would really go through the bother for a miserable £800-1000 a month. 🙄

Personally I think that child maintenance should be taken into account and see no reason why it isn’t, but given it isn’t you’re not claiming anything you shouldn’t be.

Totally agree
you will get hounded by bailiffs for not paying a £25 parking PCN, but men get away with paying no CMS
I agree it is disgusting that parents getting huge maintenance payments are still entitled to UC, whilst other mums are working full time and get nothing.
but the system is set up on the premise that an awful lot of NRP do not pay or are unreliable, which balances the outliers with huge payments. And nothing is done to force them