Please help! I have a client who lives with and cares for her elderly mum. In 1993 the mum put the daughter's name on an account for 34k and the daughter just used the account to pay bills for the mum and on one occasion to purchase a piece of land in her own name for £1000.

She claimed IS 4 years ago and did not declare the joint account as she did not view it as her capital.

The Department have suspended benefit.

Is it possible to argue that the mother had a 100% equitable interest as it was her savings and the daughter just accessed it for bills?

Thanks for any help

PC

You could try your argument, but with little success I think. The account is now in joint names and that is a fact; one the DWP cannot ignore. The better option would have been for the daughter to obtain power of attorney and thus have access to and control of the account, but with no ownership of the sum held. You may wish to do that now, but I suspect the DWP will then enter in to the deprivation of assetts rules. I do think you are now stuck with the facts as they exist in this case.

As far as the value of the account is concerned;

you could try to argue that had little / no beneficial interest in the account.

Is there any contemporaneous , or later, evidence of what Mum intended the situation to be?

Presumably daughter could access the account as she bought some land with it.

What happened then? Did she discuss the purchase with Mum. Was anything put in writing about the account then?

Anything in Mum's will about the account? Any other siblings? What did they know / think?

If she hasn't spent much of it on herself, either before or after she claimed benefit, this could indicate that there was some prohibiton on her using the money. The pattern of spending could be evidence that she didn't own (part of) the asset (the land transaction, though, will have to be explained).

In some cases, a joint account doesn't have to be halved, it can be attributed between the account holders in a way that more closely resembles their actual interest in the account. See page 355 to 361 of vol2 of Mesher, for information about beneficial ownership of an asset (for IS purposes). Its generally good guidance.

Depending on the fatcs, this looks like an interesting case.

You will have trouble with non-disclosure though, unless you can show that she had no beneficial interest in the account at all, which I think would be hard.