Inheritance for child when the parent is on benefits

[moneyisnotfunny]

Nc and some details changed for this. My young daughter is going to inherit around £30K from her late father once the estate is sorted out through probate. I am a single parent carer on benefits and am concerned about how to handle this situation. The money will be very much my daughter's and I have been told that it is to cover her maintenance up to when she reaches adulthood. Because it is maintenance, there needs to be a way of releasing the maintenance amount per month to me for her every day living expenses. If the full amount went into my account then my benefits would stop and the money would run out long before Dd hits 18 and we would because off as a family. I hope that makes sense.
How can I keep her money safe and in her name but released monthly to help for her day to day things? Is this possible? It's around £300 a month that she got and this is the rate it would continue at afaik. I will be asking for it to be paid into an account in her name. Multiple Junior ISAs? Premium Bonds? She is 8 and any account will have to be overseen by me as her only parent/guardian.
TIA.

@Bromptotoo a few weeks. The funeral was last week and all this has suddenly come to light and I'm confused and trying to make sense of it all. The adult dc are quite young still. The ex wife says she doesn't want anything other than her half of the house because she wants her dc to benefit.

I would absolutely bet a large sum of money that your daughter is entitled to more, and they’re pulling a fast one, hoping you won’t realise.
Because don’t they sound lovely, ensuring she still gets her maintenance? 🙄

Beg or borrow money to see a solicitor (forget CAB) and explain the situation.
Fond out what she’s actually entitled to.
Curious that a long since divorced ex wife still jointly owned half his home, isn’t it?
Seriously - this has con written all over it.

Once you’ve find out what she’s entitled to, then you can start looking at ways to hold that money to benefit her but not screw up your benefits. Tricky when her father didn’t do that first. But that’s really specialist stuff - again, solicitor not CAB (or Mumsnet!).

Oh and fuck her developing with his adult kids. If theyre trying to screw her over - they’re not worth a relationship with anyway.

The ex wife says she doesn't want anything other than her half of the house because she wants her dc to benefit.

But that’s hot air because she’s not entitled to anything!!!! That’s no more morally convincing than me saying I don’t want any of your daughter’s inheritance.

OP ignore the people telling you to pay for legal advice at this stage... I'm sure it will all come to light soon enough and I think if your daughter (or you) do benefit financially it'll be a bonus.

So your advice @Proseccoh is for the OP to do nothing and let the siblings control it all, for the benefit of themselves and their mother?

Cab are not inheritance advisors they can only advise on the rules of the benifits themselves they are qualified to tell you how to accept the money into a trust and what type of trust and so on. Is there not a solicitor acting for the estate you could ask once you have all the benefits info? Bear in mind all the services the solicitors offer or manging the money will all be chargeable so get all your benefits advice first.

Sorry, I'm trying to keep up.
No mortgage. It was paid off as in the final normal monthly payment earlier this year.
Life insurance I think there might be because he talked about his middle child being the beneficiary when we were together. Pension should be healthy because of the organisation he worked for. I think his middle child was named as a beneficiary of the pension too.

But she's entitled to a third of the entire remaining estate by law isn't she? (I'm not in England). The family aren't being kind or charitable here, they seem to be giving her less than she's entitled to? And as her inheritance you can't touch it presumably and I doubt you or the family can decide to set up a trust that pays you money monthly but maybe there's a way legally. You need a solicitor basically

Legally, as there is no will, the money is your daughters and needs to be saved in her name in it’s entirety until she’s 18. You actually need to sue her if you want access to it but the good news is it won’t be included as your money and so won’t affect benefits. Just set up a savings account in your dd’s name (do not include your name anywhere) and you’ll be fine.

@moneyisnotfunny thank you for that.

In the aftermath of a sudden, and from what you say unexpected, death and with the funeral only just gone people have probably not yet focused on what happens next.

Even in families where people a clued up in wills and intestacy things like probate etc don't attention until after the deceased's life has been celebrated.

I think from what you've written, that the ex-wife still owns half the house, so she gets that.

Assuming there is no will, the 3 dc get what he has left. So half the house and the assets, divided into three equal parts.

Now I think there's two possibilities from what you've said. unfortunately I think the former is more likely.

1. They think if they offer you £30k then you'll feel pleased, and disappear with no further comments and leave them to take half each of the rest.
2. The other possibility is that they want to give you £30k and then divide the rest into 1/3.

Now what I'd suggest you do is pretend you think the latter one, and tell them how wonderfully generous they are, but you don't think it can be done legally because your dd is a minor so you can't take it out of hers because she's not allowed to do a deed of variation.

Now if the latter is what they are suggesting, then I'd tell them that if you have that amount in savings, then it effects what you're entitled to, and suggest that rather than giving it you as a lump sum, they pay you each £100 a month (because they've only got 2/3 of the £30k they were going to give) until she turns 18.
If they were thinking of that, then you may well find they're happy to go to £150 each a month.

Please don't be paying for legal advice at this stage. If you want to spend anything, go the dot gov land registry website and check who owns the property, and on what basis (joint tenants/tenants in common) That'll cost you about £3-6. Some people in here are deluded. It really doesn't sound like the ex's family are doing anything untoward here, and they may not understand things themselves at this stage. I think it's nice that they are including you in the process. It's tricky. Any pension, in these circumstances, I believe the pension company themselves will decide who the beneficiaries will be. Even if he were married when he died (I know he wasn't) the wife wouldn't automatically be sole beneficiary, even if he'd specified. The pension company should take details of all children and decide themselves. It takes ages. No idea about life insurance, but again, as he was unmarried at time of death, I suspect the same, they will collect details of closest relatives and decide in due course. I hope you're ok OP, I know this kind of thing is mentally wearing! I hope your daughter will benefit by getting to know her half siblings better, if nothing else.

@Bromptotoo thank you. Some of the replies are typical mumsnet over the top stuff. I don't want to go into too much detail but the older siblings are still quite young in terms of being adults and the younger one is barely getting by after the death never mind thinking of depriving her sister of anything. She is still at uni and the eldest has only just left uni so still young and not really facing reality right now. To suggest they are scamming dd is preposterous at the moment.
The marital home house was not sold because it was the middle child's home and exW didn't want to uproot her at 18 when she was off to Uni. She's now going into her final year and discussions about the house being sold were about to start.

I don't feel I'm entitled to ask questions about the financial situation but I will. It's early days yet.

If it’s a Defined Benefit pension, then naming his middle child doesn’t mean your daughter can’t get a share. It would be up to the trustees to decide, and I very much think they would consider paying to her. There may even be a minor’s pension that she’s entitled to from it, that her adult half siblings aren’t. e.g. my widowed husband’s sons had about £300 a month from their mother’s NHS pension until they were 23.

i know it’s uncomfortable to hear it - but these people are trying to screw your daughter over.

I know he’s just died, but one 10 second google of “what if there is no will” would have told them that she’s entitled to as much as those half siblings. And if they’ve had time in their grief to talk about ex wife wanting her kids to benefit not her (when she’s not entitled anyway) and they’ve had time to approach you with their “generous” 🙄 offer, then they’ve had time to do that 10 second google.

Honestly - solicitor asap.

Or brace yourself for your daughter wistfully musing on how hard her generation has it, and how siblings just 10-15 years older were able to afford houses. You do sound like you’re at risk of not fighting for her, with your talk of relationships. Don’t let her down!

Depends on the scheme of course, but you might want to look into the pension situation as well. In our work scheme, there are two elements to the death in service payments - a lump sum which can be left to a specific person, eg the middle child, but there's also a pension payable for any dependent children, which your DD might be entitled to.

It sounds like a complicated situation, and it may not even be that the family are deliberately trying to withhold anything - not everyone knows how probate, intestacy and so on works. I know I didn't until we actually had to deal with it for the first time.

OP, I think the best plan is to thank the family for their generous offer and ask for the detail of the solicitor handling the estate saying that it needs to go into trust for her so it's a bit more complicated.
Then once the solicitor understands that there's a separate DD involved that is not part of the family then he can provide separate information to you.
They may be very kind or they may be pulling a fast one, who knows. But best to speak to the solicitor handling the estate and then they can advise

To suggest they are scamming dd is preposterous at the moment.

You are naïve. You don’t think their mother, who divorced him years ago so is hardly the closest person in grief here, hasn’t googled and knows damn well your child is entitled to a hell of a lot more than £30K? You really think that?

Ex was not named on the BC but he has paid maintenance from when she was a few months old. The maintenance went through CMS or whatever it is these days.

@NImumconfused “It sounds like a complicated situation, and it may not even be that the family are deliberately trying to withhold anything - not everyone knows how probate, intestacy and so on works. I know I didn't until we actually had to deal with it for the first time.”

You’re absolutely right that not everyone knows how it works.

But if you asked a Family Fortunes (no pun intended) style 100 people in the street, “do you think if an unmarried father dies without a will, all children get an equal share”, how many do you think would guess yes? 🤨

I'm not sure that's what you're suggesting but if anybody tries to run the 'is she really his daughter' thing DNA will nail the question lickety split!!

It’s not Child support in that way.
A dead person cannot pay child support.
It has been left as an inheritance for the daughter and unless legally stipulated is for the daughter not for the mother to spend, even on the daughter.

@moneyisnotfunny I said it way back, but just want to be sure you've seen. If the jointly owned property formed the majority of his "estate", this may well have automatically passed 100% to ex-wife, if it was owned as joint tenants. It's easy to check on the gov website how the property was owned.

Even with the best intentions I bet somehow it will be disruptive to your uc.
Probably best to just out it in to an account for your dd for when she turns 18. It will be a nice amount for uni or deposit .

Then his will should have stipulated this.

It's not too complex. A lot of people are commenting based on myths/ what they think should be fair & not the actual law.

As there was no will, the estate HAS to follow the intestacy rules:

No spouse = the estate is split evenly between the children. Therefore, your DD gets 1/3 of the estate and the other 2 children get a third each. Your DD is a minor and therefore cannot agree to a deed of variation involving her share, so this is not an option.

The other 2 children (who I assume are adults) can do what they want with their own share, including giving you money every month to replace maintenance. However, this must come from their share & not DD's.

DD's share must be held in trust until she is 18, when it must be handed over to her in full. You may not touch this money/ use for maintenance. This also must be 1/3 of the estate (assets held in his name - any outstanding debts, liabilities) and not just £30k.

As you will not be receiving any money maintenance or otherwise, your UC will not be affected. If the other family members wish to send you £300 per month from their own share as a gesture of kindness, I'm not sure how UC views regular gifts.

Hope that makes sense, but speak to a solicitor over Mumsnet. A lot of people have no idea what they're talking about!!!!!

RTFT. There is no will.