Am I entitled to universal credit

[Confusedmum74858]

So.. as the title says but it’s a complicated situation so bare with me…

me and my now ex have separated. Been together 10 years, 3 children.
I live in the North of England and for most of the duration of our relationship he’s worked in London throughout the week and only been home on weekends. He owns the property I live in and pays all the household bills and gives me an allowance to pay for food shopping, kids stuff and my own personal day to day living but he takes care of everything else. I also have a part time job which I get a small weekly wage from. My name is not on the deeds.

Obviously he wants me and the kids to continue living in the house and he will be coming up to stay in it every other weekend to have his turn with the children, and I will go and stay with my parents whilst this happens. I did think about getting my own place but I don’t want to cause the kids any more unnecessary upheaval.

He will continue to pay me monthly and based on his salary this is the amount he should be giving me for child maintenance anyway, but my mum did mention I might be entitled to universal credit so I’ve started the application process but I just don’t know how to answer the questions about us living together etc and if the kids are with me all of the time or only some of the time? They won’t be with me ALL the time but definitely 85-90% of the time. We don’t live together but the whole house belongs to him and he will be sleeping in it for 4-6 nights a month when I’m not there. Financially there are huge implications on me as I don’t earn much and the money he gives me for the kids won’t go very far without him contributing on the weekends I have them etc and not paying for their clothes and activities but I only want to claim if it’s legal and I’m not doing anything fraudulent, I’d imagine it’s a unique situation so just not sure how to go about it, it hasn’t given me an option to go into more detail yet so just wondering if anyone has any advice or has been in a similar scenario. Thank you.

Your basic UC award will consist of

Single Element - £400.15
Children x 2 - £631.81
Childcare - £225.15

Total - £1257.11

Assuming your weekly pay of £230 is after deductions for tax and NI as UC is calculated on net income.

Wage deduction for a 4 week month is £129.80
This would leave a UC award of £1127.31

Wage deduction for a 5 week month is £256.30
This would leave a UC award of £1000.81

Remember after April, you will also receive the child element for your 3rd child so add another £292.81 to the total UC award amount from then onwards.

If your total monthly amount of benefits (this includes both UC and child benefit plus any other ones you receive) exceeds £1835, or £2110.25 if you live within Greater London, then you won't receive anything more than that (the benefit cap) if you earn less than £846 per month after tax and NI. If you earn more than that then the cap won't apply.

This is brilliant thank you so much for breaking this all down for me and making it easy to understand, I have my face to face appointment next week and I will make sure I make my living arrangements etc really clear to them.

Not a problem 😊

One thing I will say is be wary of info you're given from Jobcentre and even UC staff themselves. Time and time again I've seen them give out the wrong information as they seem very poorly trained tbh. If you experience any issues then question and double check everything they say, check the Gov website for current UC regulations and keep in mind you can appeal pretty much any decision they make.