I've name changed for this but would be really grateful if you anyone could offer any advice for me.
We live abroad. We informed the IR of this at the time of our move, telling them that as of Jan 07 we were living in another country, that we were no longer working in the UK, and asking them to stop any payments (Child Benefit, Tax Credits etc) to us as necessary.
It took a while before their correspondence suggested that they had understood this information, because for a while stuff was being sent to old address, and their request for information for the tax year still showed our old jobs. We assumed it either took a while to get through the system or they never got the first communication.
During most of this period we didn't have a phone at home and depended on mobile phones here as a means of communication (long story! ) so we always corresponded by unregistered post and sometimes by email where it was possible. I only have proof of email correspondence unfortunately.
So to try and cut a long story short, where we thought everything had been sorted and all in its place, I have just been to check our bank account in the UK, which we rarely look at, and it turns out that they are still paying us child benefit, 14 months later. Now obviously this is incredibly stupid of us not to notice but everything else suggested that they were aware we were no longer in the UK and were not entitled to Child Benefit. We had savings in that account and have gradually made our way through it, using it to start us off here and to cover some unexpected problems that came up during last year. So to make things worse the overpaid child benefit doesn't even exist in that account to pay the IR back, and we are far from being in a position to pay it back.
I know we should have noticed but shouldn't the payments have stopped an awful long time ago? What on earth can we do about this? Do we have a leg to stand on at all?
This is the worst news we could have now, financially. Am taking very deep breaths but this is major stress time.