Lying about address on Primary School application

[PeppermintLatte]

i know it's wrong and i feel awful about it, but i feel i don't have much choice. this could be a little lengthy but i don't want to drip feed. i'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to read it and offer any advice.

ok, ex fiancee and i lived together in a nice suburb, we had a DD (who will start school next year, so i need to fill my application in september) we had a nice life and were so happy (well i was) then he decided family life wasn't for him, he still loved me but felt it was better we split i just want to let you know at this point that we still have a good relationship, i wouldn't go as far as saying we are friends but we are civil and still care for each other.

ex owns a property just outside of the catchment area of the school we had always wanted daughter to attend. it's a good school, not outstanding, but above average, it's a faith school and DD and i still attend the church every week that DD was christened at - this is the church that is linked with school, although the school don't make this a priority on the criteria, it's essentially just catchment area and siblings. DD attends a private nursery in the area and a few of her little friends will be attending this school.

ok, when ex and i split i had to move in with my mum, i'm newly self employed on a crap income and i had no choice. the area my mum lives in is awful, high crime rate, asbo rate etc.. and the schools are awful (i attended one, cousins attended another) i cannot send my girl to either of these schools, i just can't.

anyway, ex has just bought a bigger property in the catchment area of the school, i am still with my mum but am desperate to get back to the area i lived with ex, it's lovely and DD and i were so happy there, plus i work there, this is where my clients are from. one of my clients has a brother who lives in a 2 bed flat in the area, he has applied for his visa to move to australia to be with his GF and has said i can rent his place when he goes (likely to be late 2013) i'm pretty sure i will be able to afford it by then and i will also claim housing benefit if i need to. the area is fairly pricy, i certainly couldn't afford it just yet. i asked him could i use the address for the school application as i will be living there next year, he wasn't comfortable with it and said no. fair enough.

started panicking as sept isn't too far away and ex said "just use my address, i'm her father and you'll be living in the catchment area just after she starts school anyway" but surely it's not that easy? we are not together and are unlikely to reconcile. i claim WTC and CTC and my child benefit is obviously registered to my mum's address and this is what they use to determine DD's permanant address. would i have to change my benefits over to ex's new address? this seems dodgy to me and i would be terrified they would investigate me & see that i didn't really live there. but then how do people use "grandma's address" do they have to put child benefit into grandma's address? ex is saying he would move back to his old property and we could actually move in his new property for a few months so it's legal, but still, i know it's wrong and it's possible they would investgate me if i changed address to ex's property?

sparkles281 - Most LAs will treat you as a late application if you change your address after the application deadline. That means you will get an offer based on your new address but it is unlikely to be one of your preferences.

Some will allow you to change your address without penalty for a few weeks. I don't know any that will allow you to change your address right up to offer day without penalty.

Your plan sounds like an excellent one. If you are worried about the Tax Credits people wrongly thinking that you have moved in with your ex, you might consider what you can do to amass some evidence that it isn't the case.

For example, you could make an extra effort to get friendly with all the neighbours so that if they are asked, they will all say truthfully, "Oh yes, she lives here with her daughter and no, she doesn't have a partner." Make sure your ex never stays at the house with you overnight, that sort of thing.

Don't be ashamed of what you are doing. Provided you actually ARE living at that address at the time of application and when offers are made, and (if you are claiming Tax Credits as a single person) that your ex isn't living with you, you are doing nothing wrong.

Morning. If the council tax is in your name the LEA will normally take this as proof of your address. I know because this is what they asked me for when I did a late application while living out of area - but we were moving into area before term started. A tenancy agreement and/or council tax bill. They don't check CB AFAIK because this can be unhelpful - it can take ages for CB to catch up to new addresses.

If you are actually living in a property in the catchment area at the time of your school admissions application, then it's not illegal in any way.

"Living" means you and your daughter eating and sleeping there and keeping most of your stuff there (or what could be seen as a reasonable amount of stuff).

If your name is on the bills or a tenancy agreement of some kind, that is very useful in terms of proving that you live there.

I am kind of wondering why the father doesn't just put his daughter down for the school, using his address?

Me too BM - there's an obvious solution but there must be a reason for this!

Just a few things-my Borough ask for proof of both child benefit and council tax-the website should show you what proof the local council need when you submit the school application

If you are living in your ex partners property (with all the bills in his name) and receiving tax credits, the tax credits will stop unless you have a tenancy agreement with him and transfer the bills to your name. This happened to a friend recently-they said she couldn't even include it in a maintainence agreement

I must say though I am very unsympathetic to the situation though-why cant you send your daughter to either of the local schools? Because you would 'prefer' to send her to a ''nicer' one? Well sorry that's not how it works

That's because the OP (the mother) has got the child benefit in HER name. If they were to do that, they would have to swap the Child Benefit into HIS name, AND the child would HAVE to be resident with him.

Her vans, that's NOT true about the Tax Credits, if you have a rental agreement and you are paying the Council Tax IN YOUR NAME, and your ex-partner is not resident in the property, then Tax Credits can't stop - you can even claim Tax Credits if you are living IN the same property as your ex partner if you can prove that you are separated and your finances are separate and he is not contributing to the household.

Are you sure your friend isn't talking about Income Support, the rules for that are somewhat different, and they will be more interested in what bills are paid by your ex-partner. I think your friend may have got her benefits mixed up.

Yes that's what I said cardymow-if she is living in ex's property and the bills are in his name

My friend doesn't recieve tax credits any more. She has never recieved income support she is working

If you look at OP's post of 00:43 she says everything is in his name

We did have to show EITHER CB or a medical registration card for the child at that address - i.e. Proof registered at that address with GP, this was in addition to two or three pieces of evidence that the parent lived there. Maybe our LEA more suspicious than others. I agree though get friendly with neighbours etc.

You need not discuss why you are living there - I wouldn't, it is enough that your exp is taking his responsibility seriously, and you are living there while you get back on your feet. Why should you live in your mother's house if he has the means to support you in another property? When you move again you can give any nosey people your new address which is even closer. If you are on electoral roll at church you can make sure they keep up to speed with address changes too. It might not count as real evidence, but would be useful if ever questioned.

all of your replies have been most helpful, thank you very much.

hervana there are 2 reasons i do not want to send her to the local schools. first one being that she would only be there for a couple of months before i move into my flat, so she would have to move school again and i don't want that upheaval for her. secondly, they are awful schools, i attended one and family attended another. it's a "rough" area and the schools have terrible attendance rates, problems with bullying etc.. it's just now what i want for my child.

so, it's ok to draw a rental agreement up and for all bills to go into my name, even though it's my ex that owns the property? i just thought tax credits would think it was suspicious. as i say, i rely on my tax credits for the time being, i cannot afford to lose them.

ex will still very kindly be paying all bills as he knows the position i'm in, i'm only going to be there short term, so what would happen if i kept all bills in his name, but just put council tax in my name and obviously registered my child benefit and tax credits to his new address? i would also inform electoral roll i had moved there and he would inform electoral roll that he was back at his old property. is this going to get me into trouble? would it make me more likely to be investigated.

as you can imagine it's a nightmare living with my mother!

It's a long time since I rented, but sometimes rentals did include bills. You might be safer with three forms of id, but tax credit, council tax and bank statement should b sufficient, make sure that you are there before the deadline for applications, and that the paperwork of your change of address is in place by this time too.

i have just found this online, it is on the admissions policy for the school i want DD to go to...

Where a child lives with parents with shared responsibility, each for part of a week, the child?s ?permanent place of residence? will be determined as the address of the parent who ordinarily has responsibility for the child, as determined by reference to an official document e.g. tax credit award notice/bank statement/building society statement showing Child Benefit being paid into their account

so, would i need all the bills etc.. to be put in my name or could they stay in ex's? it's just because i won't be there for longer than 12 months it seems like hassle, especially when it will all be coming out of his account anyway. if they look into me and see it's coming out of his account is that allowed?

I know it's a hassle but I think you'd be best getting everything in your name.

The other bit that you need to consider is that every LA will take the responsible parent as being the parent that they spend the majority of the school week with. That is you and therefore it is your housing arrangements that are pertinent as far as the admissions process is concerned.
If you come to an arrangement to live in this house of your exs and you are living there on the last day for on time admission applications and are living in the house on the day of the admission allocation, then you should meet the requirement for using this address, but as stated in your above post you will need to have the child benefit being paid into an account, which has the ex's postal address on it . It would definitely strengthen you case if you have a written agreement over being a tenant and it says that your term of residence will finish in Nov 2013, as that confirms you should still be in residence when your child starts in September.
It also gives you plenty of time to tell all at church that you are renting the house etc.
How that affects child benefit, allowances etc I have no idea, could you speak to citizens advice bureau or someone who will have a much better understanding of what is what on these important issues.

I don't see why it would be a problem, as you can just argue that it is his contribution to the maintenace, that is from the school perspective, how you would stand with respect to tax credits I don't know, whether they will view it as a form of income I'm not sure. Might be worth talking to CAB etc. Often residence is also assessed by how many nights she is with you. You can also ring / e-mail the situation (with the exception of that the school is one of the main reasons for moving there, and maybe that you might move again as that isn't yet final), and ask them what the situation is regarding residency / bills etc, you can say that at the moment the plan is for him to pay bills in lieu of maintenance, but as you are applying for schools will that be a problem. At this stage I would just say that he has two properties nearby, and the plan is for you to live in one of them and he will live in the other. I would also name a few schools in your immediate vicinity rather than just the one you want, afterall you will need to put down a few options in case your first choice is oversubscribed.

I was in your situation. We had exchanged on a house but the completion was delayed by 3 months. I offered to send the LEA copies of the contracts, solicitors letters etc but to no avail. I was offered a place at a school near my old address and my DD is still on the waiting list for the school 2 mins walk away while I'm bussing it to the other place. Having said that, we have had to wait whilst I'm sure some people have rented next to the school only to move out when their place was secured. Perhaps if they hadn't done this we wouldn't be doing these 40 min jaunts so not a lot of sympathy for those who 'work the system'.

Also, how come your lovely, generous ex can afford two houses whilst you are living with your mum? Maybe he needs to pitch in a bit more rather than buying bargain properties in catchment areas he doesn't then let his daughter live in??

once again, thanks so much for all taking the time to reply. you have all been so helpful.

fridgeraiders that's awful, such a shame the LEA wouldn't accept those documents. i can completely see why you wouldn't have any sympathy. with regards to ex, he was exceptionally lucky with the apartment we all lived in, it was his grandmother's and when she passed it was left to him. it still has a small mortgage on, it's small enough that he can afford to buy a house and pay another mortgage.

i think speaking to the CAB is a good suggestion. for some reason i just thought it would be illegal to rent from your ex if you were claiming tax credits. ridiculous i know, but i'm paranoid. i hate doing anything "wrong" and i'm over cautious.

i know maitenence isn't taken into account when claiming tax credits and other benefits, but i don't know if being able to live rent free in your ex's place is seen as being unbelievable?

I dont know whether or not this will apply but you mention that the school is a church school linked to the church that you attend every week so can you not apply for a church place ? These are normally above neighbourhood/catchment places in the admissions criteria should the school be over subscribed - just a thought that you might have overlooked considering the possibility of a church place ?

hi busymummy no, the school don't take into consideration the fact that you attend the church, it's not on their list of criteria, they are only concerned about you being baptised catholic, living in catchment or having siblings at the school. i have looked into it and it only seems to be the two C of E schools in the area that put churchgoers above the other criteria.