Would you shop them?

[hercules]

Dh's cousin who has a wife and 3 kids is frauding the benefit system (99.9 sure).

They were renting privately then he "hit" her after 15 years of marriage which resulted in him being arrested and her with kids going to a b& b where he joined them.
She was given a large house where he also lived. About one year later they "bought" a large house despite only him working on a low wage and the house being at least £250,000.
They have lots of money now, bought new people carrier, big tv etc and she has no intentions of going to work.
We couldnt work out how they managed it as they are on a far less income than we are but we struggle.
They will not give out their land line number and when dh did get it from his aunt his wife answered it and not realisign it was dh said her husband didnt live there. Her husband then phoned dh bakc and saidhe'd been on the toilet.
Dh's aunt today said to him why dont we calim single parent benefit and get a house, that it is possible to claim single parent benefit and get your mortgage paid by claiming to rent from someone.
Dh explained why we wouldnt do that and realised that is what his cousin is gdoing. Dh wouldnt dream of shopping them but I have to say it does annoy me as we work so hard and pay lots of taxes but they do have 3 kids and I would hate tobe responsible for the parents being sent to prison.
It does irritate me that they are taking advantage of a system meant for people in need and i tell myself that it sets a poor example to their kids.
What would you do?

i woudlnt mind if you got a tax rebate - i could almost understand shopping them. but you dont. isnt there a monetary incentive scheme to grassing? if there is i would find out - may as well get your £25 for grassing them up

Hear hear Custy. I'd love to be able to buy my own place!

i think she should 'shop' them. no one need know. if you start questioning it in front of other relatives it will make it more difficult to later shop them as you would be number one suspect. so think carefully before you ask the aunt about it.
if you really can't do it ask someone either who you trust to do it or someone you don't know ie. me or Twinkie.

But presumably it is the cash from the fraud that enables them to pay back the loans and HP?

They could get their mortgage paid & council tax for a start, free school dinners, transport for kids to school I am sure the list goes on and on!! - I don't really care how much it is, a man perpetrating a £50 fraud is the same as a man perpetrating a £5000 fraud - both are against the law and wrong!!

I am a SAHM with 3 kids, 2 with disabilities, my hubby was working till june last year when he had an accident at work and isn't allow back to work till he has seen the consulant with his MRI scan results in september. As a result we had to claim benifits, and housing rebate. I am worse off now, but not by much.
DS and DD1 recieve DLA at the higher rate for care and mobility, so we have a new MPV car (well its a year and half old now) and we used DD1's mobility to buy DH a car for his use when I am not here. I wouldn't dream of staying on benifits forever and DH is dying to get back to work. He get very bored, though he has loved being with the kids. I don't work because hubby would never cope with all 3 kids on his own (he would forget all the appointments anyway!!!) but I have just applied to become DS' school lollypop lady.
I would shop these people as it gives all us law abying people who are on benifits through no fault of their own, a bad name...... and why should they get away with it...

They can't get their mortgage paid, they can only get interest on a mortgage paid, and there is a cut off level at which the DWP will not pay the interest (because it's too high).

As for it being wrong because it is the law, that pre-supposes that the law is always right. I personally think it is deeply wrong that the a third of children in this country live in poverty - but it's legal.

I wouldn't shop them, where are the facts in this case? Haven't read through all the posts I admit so apologies if there are facts posted. If a member of my family or friend got a big house I would assume they had won on the lottery and not wanted to share, not immediatly that there was benefit fraud.

But I wouldn't grass them up even if they told me outright, don't think you should poke where you don't belong.

The amount of rent that wll be paid varies according to area and the accomodation a family is judged to require. I know of one mother who gets all £650 pcm rent paid on her 2 bed flat (her, 2 DDs) and someone else who only gets £325 pcm paid towards £550 rent on a 3 bed hose because her 2 kids could share a room and as it has separate sitting and dining rooms so the council say it is biggger than she needs.

Regardless of this, if the woman is claiming single parent benefit and her DH is staying there for more than one night per week she is breaking the law!

BTW, if you ring up anonymously and make a complaint the people you complain about will never know, unless they are doing something dodgy. I noticed that Hercules said the DH earns about £20k p.a. so with tax credit the family would be doing better than quite a few out there without resorting to benefit fraud. They would hardly need to deny the kids food etc. if they stopped the fraud (unless of course the money is covering HP payments in which case they'd just lose the big TV etc. wouldn't they?)

hercules, i understand why this has got your back up so much and i a similar situation i would feel resentment. but i definitely wouldn't shop them: for the children's sake and because i reckon that i'm not able to judge someone else's wrongdoing from the outside...things are not always as they appear. also i think what goes around comes around and if they are knowingly and maliciously doing this they will get their come uppance one way or another. they are family remember: how much conflict would it cause if it got out that you'd done it. and if you did and they and their children's lives became miserable, could you live with yourself?

I'm with OliveOil on this one - I wouldn't shop them if you paid me. You don't know all the facts.

i do hate being on benefits, i hate the stigma attached to it, i hate being skint all the time and sitting with lists trying to work out where i can reduce the ammount i spend on one thing to pay something else, i hate occasionaly having to rely on handouts from my parents.

however what i would hate more is to put my precious son into full time childcare which tbh wouldnt provide us with enough to live on anyway.

i dont sit on my arse-im not lazy. ive nearly completed a access course in community work skills and am atarting a degree tomorrow at a local college centre. i have also done voluntary work and am currently applying to do more.

i am doing these things for my own self esteem but also to provide a good future for my son and hopefully to set him a good example.

i hope to start work when my son starts school and no longer be dependant on benefits.

But if she shops them, and they aren't doing anything wrong, then no harm done is there?

hear hear maisystar, I have been exactly where you are now - best of luck to you

cheers lisa

I think the crux of this is that they are getting benefit and affording far more than people who work and pay their taxes and don't get benefit can afford - sounds like sour grapes eh but I am sure WFTC and such like is not meant to be spent on a people carrier and wide screen telly - pretty much blows the poor children living in poverty arguement if it was taking food out of their mouths but meaning they had to drive a second hand car (like I do) and do with a narrow screen telly (like I do) I don't think so!!

The fact that they are claiming single parent benefit also means that his salary cannot be taken into account so I don't think it is the case that they just have a better standard of living from his salary and WFTC but they are living on the WFTC and SPB and adding to that with his salary.

It is is also illegal to get your mortgage paid - even if it is just the interest if your spouse is living with you as youare saying that you cannot work because of the kids or only earn so much and this is obviously not true!!

Twinkie, I don?t know how you?ve done the calculations, but I do know that the government does not yet tell citizens how to spend either their wages or their benefits. How do you know they are cheating? Hercules, have I missed something crucial? Do you know for sure that they are cheating, as opposed to being stupid enough to take out credit card loans, or greedy enough to win the lottery and not share it? And Hercules' problem is that she would have to live with the fall-out from any report she made - how will she feel afterwards, whether they are cheating or not?

I know it's a conundrum, but I just think that as other people have said, if they are cheating it can't possibly go on for long - it is very difficult to cheat - and that long term, it would be very difficult and uncomfortable to be round people you had done the dirty on, even if you found a moral justification for it. Don't forget, Hercules will know these people, their children, for years, and she would either have to live with the secret (not a nice thing to have to do) or it would always be there, the declaration of enmity. Either option strikes me as being a worse one than keeping stumm ? unless, Hercules, you dislike these people so much that you wouldn?t mind cutting off all contact with them.

I dont dislike these people but I do think it is unfair that they are so much better off than we are when we work so damn hard and pay lots in taxes.
There are lots of ways that you can get your mortgage paid byw through the benefit system but the point is the system doesnt realise they're paying a mortgage. Dh's aunt suggested to us that there are ways where the house is in someone elses name and you rent from them. As a single parent you would then get your rent paid which is actully your mortgage. My ds works in the police and has told me this is a way done by many people.
I know that they know various people who would be able to advise them on such things.
I posted here top get a range of opinions which i have and thanks to everyone for posting. Tbh they are not the only people in dh's family who are commiting fraud of some nature but as they too have kids they have been my prime concern.
Yes it is jealousy of course in some ways . Icanot afford to stay at home and dh also works nights for us to get by but i would not ever do what they are doing.
If i did shop them then i dont suppose dh would ever know anyway as we are not even supposed to know they are doing it.
I do know enough about their circumstances to know their money has not come legit. She is certainly not asingle parent .
In the end I'm sure I wont shop them . It is the right thing to do I know but I would feel very uncomfortable doing so. That is not to say I wouldnt send an email to someone who has offered here although I'm not sure of their exact address, I'm sure I know enough of their details for the dss to find them.
So is this a better way to do it or should I just forget the whole thing?
All opinions please!

No but do you think it fair to be paid benefit when you can afford much more then honest people who work their socks off for the basics?? - I for one don't!!

Just reread your post meanbean. They have in the past applied for a dodgy mortgage on a previous property which was later repossessed. The guy has done several things in the past against the law so I'm as sure as I can be. Tbh a lot of dh's family moved to this country specifically to use the benefit system and they have no qualms about doing so.

Hi Twinkie, no of course I don't think it's fair, but there's lots of things in life that aren't fair, and there are ways and means of dealing with them. In Hercules' case, it sounds like she has the in-laws from hell, but the problem with in-laws is that they tend to hang around in your life forever, blighting it or enhancing it, as the case may be.

Hercules, what I think you need to focus on is how you will feel long term if you choose any of the methods of shopping them. Do you really want to keep a secret from your DH? And if so, for how long? A month? twenty years? forever? Secrets can be quite a burden. And I wouldn't want to give in-laws like that the power to come between me and DH, if I had one! But on the other hand, you might not feel it is a big deal - only you can decide how uncomfortable or otherwise you would feel.

Meanbean - I have thougfht about this a lot today especially what you said. No, I would not like to keep a secret from dh nor do I want to spend the rest of my life seeing these people knowing i had done that.
If they were friends there would be no issue - i wouldnt want friends like these anyway but you cant so easily loose family.
So I guess i will leave it.

I wasn't suggesting you were lazy maisystar and sitting on your arse - who does with a three year old.
I too hate putting my precious dd into nursery - I have alump in my throat every day - I hate being stressed with DD1, rushing to do homework, always clock watching to get her in to bed before she falls asleep on her feet as we don't get home until 6pm then they need a good hot meal and DD1 has homework - I hate what I have to put them through at their young age but i don't have a choice - can't live without my salary.
IMO being a SAHM isn't a right for women (I actually think it should be). I think you are very lucky to have a choice between staying at home with your DS or going out to work. Sorry if I sound harsh, it is not personal at you, but a t the system.
I wish you luck with your studies and your future plans
Sonnet xx