DS lives with me

[tryharddad]

Hi,

My DS has been living with me for a couple of years now and has recently decided he has no wish to move back in with mum, nor to visit her. She is still claiming CTC for him (and my DD, who still lives with her). Now that DS wants to stay with me, I would like to stop ex from claiming CTC for him (I've sorted Child Benefit) however I will not be claiming as my household income is too high to be eligible. This is of course fine, i'm not interested in the money, but I do begrudge her claiming for him when he is/will never be there, plus her council house bedroom entitlement is also based on him living there, which I would like to also have updated.

Does anyone have any advice on how I approach this? All i'm finding on the gov.uk site is how to claim.

Thanks in advance for your time.

As gently as possible- but what good can come of this? The best case scenario involves disrupting your DDs life substantially, and to no benefit to you, bar some kind of one upmanship.
Your ex's financial affairs are no longer your concern, except when they have an effect on your children. Whatever your feelings are, for your DCs sake you need to ride way way above them.

You're being spiteful. Why not ask her to give your son some money out of that allowance? And kids being kids, he might change his mind and go back to his mum's. What would happen then if she was in a smaller house?

Why would you deprive your daughter's household of money?
I really hope I wouldn't have the urge to do the same in the same situation.
Does your dd ever get to see your ds?

I'd suggest contacting HMRC and switching the CTC over to you if you were in need of the money.

However, what you're saying is that if you made HMRC aware of your son living with you, you wouldn't be entitled to tax credits anyway but these would be removed from your ex, and she may also be investigated for fraud.

In this situation, i'd make it clear to her that it's fraud and advise her to let HMRC know. Then i'd leave it in their hands to find out.

Tax Credits don't last for ever. Depending on the age of your son, they'll be running out soon anyway and the council will eventually request a review of tenancy and find out your son no longer lives there.

Also, how does child maintenance work? Is there no arrangement since you each have one child living with you?

How do you even know what she gets? You sound delightful.

If she is no longer getting CB then at some point they will probably work out that she shouldn't be getting CTC for him. Are you in a UC area? Because if you are then forcing a change to her benefits will potentially cause her a massive financial problem, way beyond just losing the CTC for your DS.

Why are you all jumping on OP? His ex is claiming what she shouldn't be, there should be no grey area, it's fraud.

I totally agree with feral.....she is defrauding the benefits system