HB and inheritance

A question about : HB and inheritance

I just cant find any info on this and hope you can help me. I will try and be as brief as possible.

I am in a situation where I need to apply for housing benefit. As my husband is self employed, I have submitted 12 months audited accounts (april 2011 to March 12) even tho my claim doesnt start until 10 dec (potentially)

In April 2012 we received an inheritance of Ј55k. At the time I took advice and was told that I did not need to declare this unless it attracted over Ј300 in interest. Well, we paid an enormous amount of debt with it and so never got anything like Ј300 interest.

My claim for HB would be from today (10 dec if accepted) and so after we had the inheritance but because my husband is self employed, we had to give accounts prior to the inheritance.

Now my question is, will the inheritance be taken into account at all? If he wasnt self employed,they would simply ask for 3 months payslips, and so if they do take it into account, I think this is discriminating against us for being a self employed family. The reason we need to claim HB is because my husband had an accident and has had to reduce the amount of hrs he works.

Can someone please advise me. Thanks

Best answers:

• Even if you were employed they would still ask about the inheritance. They will need to know where the money has gone will need to satisfy themselves that you haven't disposed of it just to be eligible for benefits.
• How much of this money is left?
• We have about Ј2k left as I said we paid lots of debt, bought a new van as our last one was repossessed, moved house with hefty deposit. We wouldn't need to claim if he wasn't having to reduce hours and certainly didn't plan on clAiming its just the way it's worked out.
• So if our claim starts now but they want backdated accounts which includes the period of time we had the inheritance will they just not pay for that period of time? I'm really struggling with the concept of proving income and expenditure for a period of time which is irrelevant to the period of my claim.
• Working tax credit and child tax credit
• My best guess is that if you can show that you spent the money before your OH had the accident and that your income has fallen as a direct result of the accident, you should be OK. This is because there would be no question of your having deliberately spent the money in order to get benefits.
  If they do query it, I'd suggest getting expert help from welfare rights or CAB.
• Hello hopeless1234
  When you make a claim for any income related benefit such as housing benefit then all of your income and capital are taken into account at the point that you make a claim. Under normal circumstances any capital that you received before making a claim should be disregarded unless you can be shown to have deliberately deprived yourselves of capital in order to get help with your rent or any other monies. This is called the deprivation of capital rule.
  If you received money in April then firstly the council would have to know that you had received it. They would then have to prove that you would know that in December you would need to claim housing benefit and they would have to prove that you deliberately spend or moved all that money in April so that you could claim housing benefit in December.
  You could be asked to provide bank statements for the last six months and it would be reasonable for the council if they say the money coming into your account to ask what you spent it
  on. You would then have the opportunity to show how you had spent the money. It is for them to show that your actions were deliberate ( such as transferring the remainder into a relatives account) in order to be able to claim benefit
• Its interesting you say that all income and capital are taken into account at the time of ther claim because as a self employed family, the council asked us for accounts for the financial year up to March 2012. Why do they look at this period when its irrelevant?
  I think I could show that in April we had no intention of claiming HB, we moved to a bigger house and have already paid over Ј12k in rent (2 x Ј6300). There is no way I would have moved house if I thought I would now be in this position but are they going to believe me? They must get loads of applications from people who are out to beat the system.
  We bought a new van and paid for lots of training courses for my OH and so presumably this would show that we intended to support ourselves?
  We havent transferred the money to kids accounts or anything like that but we have used some to top up wages because of the reduced hours since OH accident. How will they calculate this?
  I know this situation looks bad but we have tried to better our lives and our kids and didnt forsee this happening and to be honest I find the whole thing really stressful.
  Thank you to everyone who has given advice so far, its really appreciated