Hi Everyone a very distressed lady came to me about a problem a "friend" has, this is all i know......
Her friend's mother died in December. She was in her early 90s and had been a widow for about 7 years. She had been in receipt of Pension Credit for some time, although she had queried her eligibility at the time of the award as she did not think she was eligible. the friend is sorting out her mother's affairs and the Pension Credit people have said her mother was overpaid and asking for the return of £10k, obvouisly from her estate.
Even though she did not go into detail of how the overpayment actually happened, i feel she should try and get some answers rather that just pay...what do you think?

Absolutely! All overpayment recovery attempts should start an enquiry as to whether grounds for recovery can be established under section 71 of the Admin Act. If grounds can’t be established then recovery should be resisted. Check out the discussion (on this site) about recovery at common law.

Second, if recovery can be grounded then refer to the decisions in Hinchy and B. If there was a failure to disclose or a misrepresentation then was the duty absolute, clear and unambiguous. If not then was the failure to disclose or misrepresentation reasonable given all the circumstances of the case.

NB. The reasonability argument is harder to argue in misrepresentation cases and, generally, recovery is easier where misrepresentation is relied on rather than failure to disclose.