Divorced parents have a joint residencey order on a 50%/ 50% split for their single child. Mother has been refused HB to cover 2 bedroom house rent even tho child is there 50% of time (alternate weeks, 1/2 of holidays etc) She has also been refused other child benefits/ tax credit etc which her ex-husband is claiming. I'm probly looking in the wrong places but can find no guidance or precendents, and need to advise mother as to her rights of appeal. Cn anyone help please? thanks

It's a difficult one as there is currently no provision for 'split' claims for Child Tax Credit, Child Benefit, Income Support, etc, although there have been a few Human Rights (Article 8) challenges. In cases like these your client could claim CTC & CB and leave it up to the Inland Revenue decide who should be treated as the parent with responsibility-your client would have a right of appeal against their decision if negative to her, but whatever the outcome only one of the child's parents would recieve the benefit. In relation to the HB, you could ask the LA to re-refer the case to the Rent Officer incuding the child as well as your client as an occupier of the property (although as with other benefits the LA can only treat one parent as having responsibility for the child- not both)and/or request Discretionary Housing Payments. Think there was a thread on the HB discussion forum recently on a similar subject?

As there are no child addtions in either IS or JSA anymore and those additions have been replaced by child tax credit, you might have grounds to challenge the CTC decision by citing Hockenjos v Secretary of State (CJSA4890/1998) where it was held that linking JSA to child benefit was discriminatory and so contrary to EC Directive 79/7

This argument can not be used for IS, and so far all article 8 challenges have failed (see for example R(on the application of Chester) v Secretary of State for Social Security (2001), also NI Commissioners decision C2/01-02-IS(T)

You will be hard pushed to get HB to refer to the rent officer without being in receipt of HB because HB Reg 14 specifically makes child benefit the litmus test where a child spends equal amounts of time in different housholds. You also have the additonal constraint of a Court of Appeal ruling supporting that premise in R v Swale BC HBRB ex p Marchant CA 2000 1FLR 246.

You could argue that the question of which household the child is living in must be decided on a week by week basis, and so if the child spends say,the school holidays with your client, then the child should be included as an occupier during those periods