Benefit Fraud Due To Financial Abuse

[strugglingstepdad]

My partner was victim to all of the types of domestic abuse with her ex partner.

Recently we've been addressing the financial abuse issue and the large number of debts that are in her name.

The current one is benefit fraud. She was convicted in 2008 but now the local authorities are trying to collect the money. We are talking about 20k at this point!

Going through what happened it was clear it was through financial abuse, but at that time it wasn't recognised by the court as a mitigating factor. Also from what I gather the convicting court didn't make an order of payment!!

So we are trying to figure out at the moment where to go and what to do in order to get it sorted. I am on a low wage and my partner is on benefits and we really can't afford huge payments.

Can anyone point us in the right direction?

I'm a benefit assessor

Whilst I have great sympathy for your partner reasons for commuting benefit fraud are rarely taken into consideration.

The courts do not need to order the money to be recovered - in every benefit application your partner will have signed or agreed to a declaration that they will be liable for any overpayment.

If you do not make a repayment plan with the authority they can apply an attachment of benefit, but this depends on the benefits that your partner claims.

So my advise would be to approach the authority and basically say our income is £X, expenses are £X so we can afford to pay £X per week/month and then stick to it.

I do believe now that the financial abuse is taken into consideration?

We were in front of a county court judge who basically said that on Friday?