Hello All,

I have been successful in getting a man with severe mental illness a refund of £20k+ from the local partnership trust. The money was paid because when he became eligible for HB in 2005 he also became eligible for Supporting People funding- however the people responsible for his care did not pick up on this and for a number of years he was paying for his own care. The trust admitted it had been their fault as it was their responsibility to inform Supporting People he was getting HB.

I have found parts of the HB regulations and checked with a number of agencies and it appears that this amount should be ignored for the purposes of HB entitlement and I was all set to write a letter to the HB department regarding this.

However the cheque has been made payable to the man's mother who has Power of Attorney. The family have now stated they don't feel there is any need to inform HB as the money is not in the man's name. I don't know why the Partnership Trust have done this.

I have checked in the CPAG book re 'capital payments made to a third party on your behalf' but still can't seem to work out if this payment does count as his capital or not.

Any input into this would be gratefully received

Thanks

The money is his. Power of Attorney generally does not displace but supplements the rights of the person who has granted it (this may be different if the POA has been registered with the court of protection). An attorney is someone who has the power to act alongside you and to do things you can't/don't want to do (like selling your house for you if you are on holiday at the time, which happened to us once and we gave our solicitor the POA).
As he is absolutely entitled to the money it's exactly the same as money in the bank or held in a solicitor's client account. He is the beneficial owner and the attorney is just handling it on his behalf. It's not like a trust where the trustees may have discretion about how they use the money.
From the other end: it clearly isn't the attorney's money: she is not free to use it except for him and so it shouldn't affect HER benefits.

Tue 08-Jun-10 09:13 AM by murphs

Thank you, that's as I thought.

I still don't understand why they made the cheque out in the mother's name rather than the son's but hey ho...........