What does the government have against hard working families who want to stay togther?

[TwinSetAndPearls]

Have spent the afternoon getting financial advice as I think we are about to loose everything.

My ex has stopped paying maintenance, infact I am now paying him money! I am facing legal bills. We are about to loose our tax credits, which we were expecting as my dp had had a pay rise, but we have been told that we now owe them money even though we told them about our change of circumstances as they happened but they failed to process that change, even though i kept phoning to say I thought we were getting too much money.

In the past few months our income has reduced by £1200 a month. We were advised today that the best thing we could do to financially survive is to sell our house, blow the equity on fancy holidays, new cars etc and then rent somewhere on my own I would then get reduced council tax, £122 tax credit a week ( if I worked as a childminder with two children for 4 days a week at my advertised rate) and I may even get help with my rent. Our second option was for dp to get himself sacked from work or take a lower paid job again as out tax credits would make us better off.

Where is the incentive for people to want to work hard and struggle through the tough times as a family to give your children a better future.

I am not expecting an answer I am just bloody angry and if I don't type it in an angry stressed manner on here I will end up shouting or spend another night in tears of stress and frustration.

Am sending you hugs (())

I totally agree with you about no incentive to work hard anymore. Dh and i would be better off if i left and got a council house with the kids and worked part time. STUPID COUNTRY

thats tony blair for you!

(I COMPLETELY agree with you BTW, its madness!)

Oh {{{Hugs}}} hon, not sure what to suggest, but I'm sure I read on here a while back, that you don't have to pay back the tax credits people, as its their balls up, check the back threads, there is a form you can fill in somewhere that means they have to lump it.....they said we had to pay some back last year, as they got ours wrong, but they then just took it out of anything we'd get this year, then surprise, surprise, we earn't less this year and now they owe us!

As an example. My sister has 3 kids, one on way. Her DP and her have a 5 bed house and are on benefits and have never worked and they get more disposable income than we do!
DH and i both work more than 45 hours a week and after all bills are lucky to have enough money to buy food etc let alone little luxurys! Sometimes it all gets too much and we cant understand how the government justify all of this!

Totally agree. I would actually be better off if DH and I were to 'seperate' and I was to live as a single parent. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of incentives for middle income couples. We're actually worse off now than we were a few years ago. It's maddening.

sounds awful for you but who did you get this advice from...

if your income has been reduced by 1200 a month, should this not allow you to have an increase in tax credits? you are entitled to tax credits for upto 60K a year..

why has ex stopped paying? Surely he is more to blame for this than Tony Blair?

Dp is being made redundant at the end of the month, after slogging his guts out for 15 years and having nothing but a clapped out L reg mondeo to show for it and a lot of reciepts to the CSA we have decided that the way to go is for him to get a PT low paid job and then we will still be skint but he will get to see the kids go to school and wont feel so pissed off watching everyone on the dole wiht thier Nike drainers dripping in gold off to the gym.

Mancmum after the £1200 reduction we still have too much to get working tax credit. WE get £10 a week child tax credit but I would imagine they will take that away because of the overpayment. The daft thing is we were sure we we being given too much money so were not spending it but when we stopped recieving maintenance and I became too ill to work as much as I was we had to rely on the tax credit money to pay our bills.

It is also Tony Blair's useless CSA and inland reveneue that allow my ex to fiddle his maintenance.

I have spoken to the local welfare rights people, we have phoned the inland revenue, the local council, the bank manager and I have also done some chekcing on my own by typing figures into entitledto.com. Everyone has told us the same.

The daft thing is that one of our falls in money has come from me voluntarily giving up my DLA as I felt I wasn't ill enough to get it and felt uncomfortable taking money from the state.

Now all this has happened my depression is worse than it has ever been, I am back on medication and my gp wants to put me back into hospital.

i agree its stupid, me and dd were better off when dh (not dh then) was not living with us (we were young and still living seperately) and i didnt have a job, now he doesnt earn much (14k) but we now have less money than we did.

If we had lied and not told them about him moving in we would have been rolling in it (in my terms but prob not some of yours) as our income woudl have near enough trebled with his money and my benefits! but i have been honest and have nothign to show for it, so we are left living with my parents, waiting on the council list and wishing there was something we could do.

i know some of you will say we chose to have a baby but we didnt really (in a way) i was on the pill and using condoms when we concieved dd but i just couldnt get rid of my baby, so now we'r stuck here.

sorry to go off on a tangent but i agree the system is ridiculous it doesnt encourage people to get off their backsides and work because it just wouldnt be worth their while!!!!

staceym11 our bank manager advised off the record that dp moves out to live with his mum so then I can claim the tax credits etc and keep the house and any equity in it rather than selling up.

that would prob be best if you cant cope on the money your on now, i know its hard but i also know you'll do whatever you can to keep your family with a roof over their heads.

it would be incredibly hard to go from owning your own home to renting, its a step backwards in most peoples eyes.

i dont really know what to suggest tho as my situation is so different, but i do understand the frustration and anger with the system it is utter stupidity!

It isn't something we will be doing as we bught the house together and we are a family that live together. I think the bank mamager meant that dp doesn't actually leave the house just officially, but it isn't right and I don't belive in claiming things we are not really entitled to.

If your going to lose your house but could get more money if he goes to him mums for a few months I think you should do that.
He could go to his mums for 4 nights and stay at yours for 3.

It would break dd heart if dp wasn't here every night, she is quite insecure about him as my ex has filled her head with lots of rubbish about him.

I am also struggling with depression at the moment and don't think I could cope on my own.

I also don't see that tax credits and the other agencies would beleive I was paying our mortgage and everything on my own.

Knowing that I am doing the right thing and keeping my family together mean more to me than bricks and mortar.

Ok, I can understand that, you shouldnt have to do it anyway.

we have spent the day adding up lots of columns of figures and we think that if I can get my childminding going and dp works seven days a week we can keep the house and scrape enough money to get by. This is dd first proper home and she loves it, I can't bear the thought of us loosing it.

Answering your first post, twinset, I agree completely. DD1 has a friend who is a single parent, living in a rented house, who has just graduated. She has done really well to get a management job at the local sports centre paying £17K - and she is going to be worse off! What is the point?

So sorry to hear about your situation now - hope you can sort things out somehow - it's so unfair.

Say hi to beautiful eyes from me

For quick money Ebay everything you dont use or dont need. Any big things, weights, whatever put them in free ads. Good Luck

Thanks Janh, she overheard us talking before and then disapeared in her playroom to come back with a few of ehr birthday presents. She said " Can we keep this house if we take these back to the shop!"

I am in the process of putting things on ebay, currently trying to hunt down the digital camera. I normally sell on ebay to build up money in my paypal account which I use to buy dd clothes. I have a loft full of kids designer clothes as well as clothes of mine that I don't wear. I need to be more focussed and start selling it all.

That is sad about your friend Janh and very frustrating. It has hit dp very hard as he fought really hard to get an education so he could escape the life he came from. He also takes his responsibilities towards dd very seriously. It is frustrating that he is having to work seven days a week so that we can have less disposable income than I had as a single mother on benefits.

On a happier note I have had an email from the company that are dealing with our emmigration enquiries to Canada and that is going ahead, so going to go back to the bank to see if we can release some equity from the house to pay our fees.