Married but not living together - benefits!

[lovelycandles]

Hi
Looking for some advice for my elderly dad. He is in receipt of state pension plus pension credit, attendance allowance etc and has no other private income. He lives in a HA property and is considering getting married again.

At the moment it's a long distance relationship as both have strong family ties to their local areas so they are considering marrying but keeping their own homes and only seeing each other/staying over at the weekends. This fits into both of their lives well and fulfils their real desire for companionship.

Marriage (rather than just remaining as partners) is important to them for religious reasons but my dad would like to know if this arrangement would have an impact on his benefits. They would be running separate houses and finances but just living together at weekends. Would dad need to declare this and would it impact his benefits?

I. Short yes I think it would

ive known a younger working age couple, marry and die to the size of each of their families - they both had 4 children living with them - this caused a lot of issues with benefits.
mtbe issue was they couldn’t live together as they could be housed in anything suitable

it caused severe problems endlessly with their benefits as they didn’t live together, through no fault of any bodies

State Pension and Attendance Allowance are not means tested benefits so will not be impacted by any marriage. Pension credit is a means tested top up which might be impacted. Assuming his housing costs are covered by housing benefit then this is also means tested.

The issue will be to what extent the wife’s financial position is deemed to benefit your dad even if they are not living together - the default presumption is that marriage means joint finances are considered for means tested benefits purposes.

In this scenario I think you could do worse than to ring the pensions office and the council and just ask the questions. And of course your dad’s girlfriend should do the same. Forewarned is forearmed and all that!

He is likely getting a severe disability premium on his pension credit which increases his pension credit significantly and he only gets that because he lives alone. I think he would therefore need to let pension credit know the situation and let them decide whether they would/ should be treated as a couple or not.

And don’t forget to think they need to update Their Wills, as marriage invalidates all previous wills and a spouse inherits all.

and worth thinking about, if either owns a house then that can be sold to support the other spouse if that person needs care.

my mum would have been devastated that the house she bought and paid for, went on my dads second wife’s care, and not to benefit her children and grandchildren.

Lovely, thanks everyone. I assumed he would need to inform the pensions/benefits people but yes, I'll give them a ring and get some general advice.

Dad would prefer to not have to go through a whole new benefits assessment as he had to do that when my mum died and they stopped all his benefits and then went on to overpay him

• an admin nightmare/cock-up which took us weeks to sort out.

But of course it's important to do everything honestly, so I'll ring and get their advice!

It probably won't affect his benefits if they are both running seperate households and are not going to be financially linked. It is the getting married and the fact that she is going to be spending a few night a week there that could cause problems. Bit off an unusual situation i guess.

From the Government website:
Definition of a couple
The Department for Work and Pensions counts 2 people as being in a couple if they live in the same household and are:

married to each other
civil partners of each other
living together as if they were married.

I think it unlikely, to be affected if they are running two separate households, particularly if they are both registered for Council tax in their respective homes.

The main issue might arise if one spouse eventually needs long term residential care, and the marital assets - such as property value, if one of them owns a house - might fall foul of this.

Why does he/do they want to get married? What will the legal benefit be?

This is odd as I had this come up as a referral at work last week.
Married but living apart does not change the benefits they receive as it is not your relationship status but whether you share a residence that matters (unless you have recently separated but live together there are special rules about that) so your fathers benefits should remain the same.

Couldn't they just have a religious ceremony and be joined in the eyes of their god but not legally?

It's a religious thing. They don't want to be seen to be 'living in sin'.

Oh that's interesting, thank you!
She owns a small property but as it's effectively her children's inheritance my dad would be happy to sign some kind of legal document to ensure he has no claim to it, should she die first. Would presumably have to see a solicitor about that.

I'm going to contact the pensions people next week and chat it through. They're talking about pursuing this in the next few months but want to know upfront what their rights and responsibilities are.

@lovelycandles hiya, it’s been some time but wondering if you
could kindly give an update as going through a similar situation :(