how much worse off will i be financially if my partner moves in?

[boomboomfirepower]

General question really. I have done lots of googling but cant find anything.

I am a lone parent claiming Income Support, Child Benefit and Housing Benefit. Im not well off but its enough to support me and my son and get the bills paid.

I recently got engaged and would like my partner to move in, but I need to be able to give him a fairly accurate estimate of how much of the rent etc he will need to pay so he is able to budget.

I cant just ask him to pay half, because I have literally no idea how much of my Housing Benefit they will reduce, or if it was affect my other benefits if he lives here. I obviously do not want to end up in a situation where my personal income is dramtically reduced so I would have to ask my fiance for money for things for my son for example. (He would gladly contribute but I wish to remain relatively financially independant).

Has anyone in my situation had a partner move in? Any info would be great. I understand that everyones situation is different. I tried the online benefit calculator but it was useless. DP earns about £13k a year if that helps!

In a similar situation so will be watching this thread closely.

Also haven't been able to find anything useful online!

The benefits situation is changing but I would think most of your rent and council tax will be paid and you will get WFTC and child benefit.

You won't get any income support once you're living together.

You will get some tax credits instead. Go to their webpage and run the calculator - just put in the figures as if he's already living with you - and it will give you an estimate of what you'll get. Or ring their helpline and they can tell you.

You might still get some housing benefit but it depends how high your rent is. You'd need to contact your local housing benefit department to find out. Same for council tax benefit.

You'll still get child benefit and any child maintance you get the same as ever.

www.turn2us.org.uk/ will calculate it.

I doubt you'll get most of your rent paid - we have 3 children, one disabled, and have similar income. We get about 40% HB.

Congratulations on your engagement

I looked into this when I was first considering moving in with DH as I was on IS too. What I realised was that, once you move in with a partner, the benefits/tax credits system treats you entirely the same as any married couple with children. They do not consider whether your DP is the father of your own dc or if you have actually got married. So we actually decided to delay moving in until after we were married, since cohabiting seems to remove your rights to most benefits, but at least marriage gives you some other rights to make up for it!

The turn2us calculator is really good, you will have to input your figures as a joint application as if you were already cohabiting and your DP's salary will be taken into consideration for everything, including tax credits. What problems were you having with the calculator earlier? I've found it quite straightforward to use. Your DP will be assumed to be supporting the family as much as he can on his income, including child-related costs. We lost all our CTC when I married, but DH's income is higher than yours so you might still qualify. The HB/CTB thresholds are quite low though, so I agree it's doubtful you'd get much help there.

In practice you will find it hard to be financially independent and to avoid your DP paying for essentials for your DS though - the family finance model used by the govt assumes that you'll be pooling resources and that your DP's salary is available to be used for the whole family. I am pretty much a dependent on DH now, as I only get CB (have never got maintenance), but he accepts this as part of the deal of being in a relationship with a woman who has a child.

Thanks for your replies.

Its a bit of a tricky one as I'm in college training so I can't get a full time job for another year and z bit, and dp works in construction so he isn't in steady work with regular wages.

Its a bit of an inconvenient time to want to move in together but I doubt we would be happy to wait over a year!

I doubt dps wages would cover all the rent and bills and ds's costs, plus the car and petrol etc, ,so surely we would qualify for some more help than just a little tax credit?

Ring up and ask? It does sound slightly more complicated if you're studying - student loans? - so maybe give them your exact circumstances.

It would be difficult to remain financially independent and provide for your son I would think as your partners income will be taken into account and inevitably yours reduced.

If you are both so committed that you are getting married though, I'm sure he is committed enough to your son to helping provide for him. Long term you can't be expected to provide for your child yourself while your husband doesn't contribute. Is it just difficult to raise that with him? I sympathise with that.

I'm not sure why you thought the benefits calculator was useless but using that and the £13000 you said your partner earned it appears you would get about £100 a week tax credits and about £30 a week towards your rent as well as child benefit of £20.30

Do you get tax credits now?

We have discussed it but as I had no idea how much he would be expected to contribute we haven't gone into great detail.
Know if he thought he could afford it he would happily contribute to ds's things but I don't think I would be comfortable effectively sitting at home most of the time while he worked to provide for me even, let alone ds too. I have always been fiercely independent (as most lone parents are I imagine) )and don't like the idea of my partner bringing in all the money and me not having my own to contribute.

I do get tax credits now yes.

Maybe I was just being dim about the calculator but I just couldn't understand the results it came up with!

Well it depends on his hours. To claim WTC you need to have a combined working weekly hours of 24 or more.

So, if you meet this, say your rent is £80 a week. You will get around £23 in housing benefit, so you would have to pay around £62.
Tax credits around £80 a week.
depending on the band for council tax, so for example if D you would get around £4 a week, so you would pay around £23 a week.
CB around £20.

So you would get roughly £134 aweek, and have to pay out £85 a week from this.

It really does depend on your rent.

For tax credits, presuming your DS is over 1 year old and your DP works full-time, you will get around this much:

Working tax credits:

Basic element: £1,920
Couple and lone parent element £1,970
30 hour element £790

Total = £4680

Child Tax Credits:

Family element £545
Child element £2,720

Total = £3265

Grand Total = £7945

However, your income reduces that total. The first £6420 is ignored. That means that your DH's £13000 will be treated as £6580.

For every £1 over £6420, 41 pence is deducted from your Tax Credits. So your total deduction would be £6580 x 0.41 = £2697.80

This would bring your total tax credit award for the whole year (remember though that you are already in June) to roughly £5247.20, which would be £1982.20 Working Tax Credits (£38.12 per week) payable to your DP and £3265 Child Tax Credits (£62.79 per week) payable to you. So £100 per week in total.

Housing benefit

You get allowances which are added together and deducted from your income. All calculations are weekly. The allowances for your situation (presuming you are both over 18) are:

Couple rate £112.55
Child £65.62
Family £17.40
Earnings disregard £10
Additional Earnings Disregard: £17.10

Total allowances: £222.67

Your income is totaled:

Tax Credits: £100
Wages: 224.19 (£13000 gross changed to net and calculated weekly).

Total income: £324.19

The allowances are taken away from the income and the total is deemed your 'excess':

£324.19 - £222.67 = £101.52

You are expected to contribute 65% of that towards your rent:

£101.52 x 0.65 = £65.99

So £65.99 is what you'd be expected to contribute towards your rent (roughly) each week.

Council used to use the same system, but deducted 20% as your contribution, so you would be expected to pay

£101.52 x 0.20 = £20.30 towards your Council Tax.

However, the changes in legislation have made Council Tax Relief a local benefit now, so some LAs calculate differently and you'd have to check.

So, you are likely to have:

£324.19 from CTC, WTC and wages.
£20.30 from Child benefit

Total: £344.49

You are likely to have to pay (at least) £65.99 + £20.30 towards rent and Council Tax, so a total of £86.29.

That leaves you £258.20 for utilities, food, and living costs.

Those figures are all rough, btw - don't rely on them exactly.

Wow thanks for that calculation.

My rent is just under six hundred a month. 250ish doesn't seem live very much for three people to live on for a month! That would not even cover food and bills to be honest, let alone petrol, car insurance etc!

That's a weekly figure Everything to do with benefits is calculated weekly at the moment. Universal Credit will be monthly.

Do you rent privately? If so, you'll need to check the Local Housing Allowance rate for your postcode. Bear in mind that they will only allow you 2 bedrooms for your circumstances, so it's the 2 bedroom rate you need to use.

Weekly! ? Oh well that makes it s whole lot more appealing!

I've come over all excited because if that's roughly the figures then dp could totally move in!

IME its impossible to know til you bite the bullet and do it

its shit, but if you want to move on with your life you have just got to go for it.

when i was in the same situation every calculation i did came out different. then what we got was different again. and the advisors at the jobcentre and tax credits dont know their arse from their elbow tbh

in our case, DP (now dh) was on about 21k and i got about £70 quid a week WTC plus we still got child benefit.

it was ok but my drop in "income" took some getting used to

am working now and DH earns more so things are better. i would say you will still get a lot of help as your dp is on a fairly low income. good luck x

"I don't think I would be comfortable effectively sitting at home most of the time while he worked to provide for me even, let alone ds too. I have always been fiercely independent (as most lone parents are I imagine) )and don't like the idea of my partner bringing in all the money and me not having my own to contribute."

Sorry, I thought that you were training at the moment and was assuming you would either then be working or being a SAHM for your DS if he's young enough. I wouldn't think being a SAHP would be effectively sitting at home.

Sorry I didn't mean it like that at all. I'm more than aware that being a sahp is hard work. I just meant even if I didn't have kids I would want to pay my way to retain some independence.

If your DP is committed to you in the long term - then why not look at it as a long term situation? You're at home now and not working - I presume your DS is preschool if you're on income support. But in a few years time you'll be able to work whilst he's at school. Or maybe you'll have more DCs together and be at home with the too. Or maybe you'll be working full time whilst your DP stays at home with new DCs and picks your DS up from school too! Who knows? If your DP says he's up for taking on the responsibility (and the fun) of helping raise your DS then I think it's OK to accept that.