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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Income support, JSA and tax credits  →  Thread

Living together - married couple

JoshCamden
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London Borough of Camden CSF Welfare Rights Team

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Hello,

Any advice about a slightly complex family situation for a married client.

The client has been married since 2014 but has never lived under the same roof as her husband, as they both continued to live with other family members while bidding for council properties (which they are still doing). They have never separated or stopped being in a relationship with one another. They see each other most days, go out together, share their finances, eat together, and have had two children together but have never lived under the same roof. They claim Tax Credits together (there is WTC entitlement but it is not in payment due to his employment income being too high).

Can she claim IS as a single parent? It seems to me to hinge on whether they are part of the same household or separate households (as per R(SB)4/83), which in turn leads to the question, can you be part of the same household without living under the same roof? (Which seems to be the exact opposite of most issues around living together). If you can, for me the evidence points to them being part of the same household due to their shared lives and finances. The only thing they DON’T do is live together under one roof. If not, then it seems that strictly speaking she could claim IS as a single parent, although this also raises another set of issues, as they are currently (correctly, I think) claiming tax credits as a couple.

Any thoughts would be very much appreciated!

past caring
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Welfare Rights Adviser - Southwark Law Centre, Peckham

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For IS the issue is whether they are ‘co-habiting’ or ‘living together in the same household’. In this case, the focus has to be on the word ‘together’ - they are clearly living apart and have never been resident together under the same roof, so I don’t see an issue for the IS claim. And whilst it might be thought that they are living apart temporarily (i.e. until they find accommodation which they can live in together) CIS/508/1992 makes it clear that you can’t be treated as a couple living apart temporarily in circumstances where you’ve never lived together.

I think the biggest issue will be the practical one of shared finances - if his earnings from employment are so high that he/they are knocked out of WTC entitlement, they’re surely also going to be so high as to knock her out of IS entitlement? After all, their finances are shared…..?

ClairemHodgson
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Solicitor, SC Law, Harrow

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past caring - 19 October 2016 01:49 PM

I think the biggest issue will be the practical one of shared finances - if his earnings from employment are so high that he/they are knocked out of WTC entitlement, they’re surely also going to be so high as to knock her out of IS entitlement? After all, their finances are shared…..?

mmmm - but if they aren’t living together and never have, would their earnings in fact be aggregated under the living together provisions?  thought it was one or the other (ignoring, for the moment, the DWP’s propensity for saying people are living together when they never have ...)

Brian Fletcher
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Welfare Rights, Wigan & Leigh Carers Centre, Wigan

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Household may refer to people held together by a particular kind of tie, even if temporarily separated. (Santos v Santos [1972] All ER 246)

past caring
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Welfare Rights Adviser - Southwark Law Centre, Peckham

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ClairemHodgson - 19 October 2016 02:49 PM
past caring - 19 October 2016 01:49 PM

I think the biggest issue will be the practical one of shared finances - if his earnings from employment are so high that he/they are knocked out of WTC entitlement, they’re surely also going to be so high as to knock her out of IS entitlement? After all, their finances are shared…..?

mmmm - but if they aren’t living together and never have, would their earnings in fact be aggregated under the living together provisions?  thought it was one or the other (ignoring, for the moment, the DWP’s propensity for saying people are living together when they never have ...)

If I do not live with my partner and she is giving me £200 p/w from her earnings and I’m out of work, I still have £200 p/w for JSA/IS/ESA purposes…..

Opening post says they do in fact ‘share’ their finances and his earnings are sufficient to knock them out of WTC entitlement for a couple. Yes, it will depend on exactly how much he’s giving her but it’s fair to assume he’s giving her something…..

1964
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Deputy Manager, Reading Community Welfare Rights Unit

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I suppose it depends how much of it is effectively child maintenance. It may not all fall to be taken into account.

Interesting scenario. I had a similar case some time back. In my case there was that a court order in relationship to a child from a previous relationship prevented one member of the married couple from relocating to another part of the country where the spouse lived. Again, they’d never lived together. My client received (and continued to recieve) IS on basis of being LP (DWP accepted she was not part of a couple) but we had a bru-ha-ha in relation to her TC claim (unusually, TCO refused to accept that she SHOULD be making a joint claim).

John Birks
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Welfare Rights and Debt Advice - Stockport Council

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As they’re married Living Together as if ...... in the same household is the wrong tree.

It’s different for the following points -

For entitlement to IS responsibility for children in the household, there not being a partner (or treatment of absence of said partner) is the key.

There are children. There is responsibility for the children.

There is a partner -  official by way of marriage. There appears no issue of estrangement or disharmony.

Marriages are funny same as relationships - they’re all different - but marriage is a legally binding contract.

There is an absence of partner from the home/household - If the husband is living away from the claimant and family he cannot be treated as a member of the household if he does not intend to resume living with the rest of the family or is likely to be away from the family for more than 52 weeks.

Intention is everything.

There are exceptions - custody, some hospitals and being out of the UK etc would prevent the ‘partner’ (husband in this case) being included in the calculation.