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Any way to avoid a couple claim for a husband and wife?
Hi,
I am presuming this is a no but thought I would check anyhow.
I have spoken to a women who is receiving no benefits. Can’t work due to ill health. Going to get a PIP claim started however I am struggling with how to approach UC.
She is married however her husband gives her no money and keeps his finances totally separate. I get the sense they have very little to do with each other and she says he doesn’t care about her. Finding out his income and savings etc is out of the question. They appear to be married in name only rather than any practical sense. She has not worked recently so New Style ESA not an option.
She also said if they did claim he would take all of the money for himself. I told her they could maybe split payments under an APA or she could just have it paid all to her as it will be her claim.
There is no way she can claim by herself though right?
Cheers
She can definitely claim alone, it just depends on whether they understand themselves as a couple? The threshold looks at a number of factors including how they present publically, whether they have a sexual relationships, how finances are managed and whether they live together. No one factor, including living together, is enough. Look up ‘cohabitation’ in CPAG.
If you make a single claim and it’s refused, I would challenge it in the normal way on the basis that although they live together and are married, they are two separate households.
Have a look at the CPAG handbook 2017/18 pages 52 - 55 regarding UC.
For the so called old legacy benefits and Pension Credit it is a scenario that happens/happened from time to time.
Oh great, this does all vaguely ring a bell actually. I will read further in CPAG as suggested!
I doubt the husband will let her make a claim anyway sadly but it’s good to know it’s worth a shot if I can get past this issue.
As they are married the only question is whether or not they are living in the same household. I’m assuming they are sharing accommodation? They could maintain separate households within a house, and some separated couples do so, but if she is currently financially dependent on him it may be that they do have a common household.
The idea that he could take her money from her, while she doesn’t even know what his income is, worries me. Is it appropriate to suggest that she gets advice about her rights and the help available if she wanted to move on from this marriage?
They do live together from what I gathered. I am not entirely sure if she would be ‘financially dependent’ as he refuses to give her any money at all but she must be surviving somehow so I imagine they are linked for example shared food buying etc. So I guess this is dependent after all actually isn’t it.
Re your second paragraph, I definitely agree there. It all seemed a little strange to be honest. I wanted to double check the chances of UC on here and then I will speak to her about the situation again. Definitely one to keep an eye on.
Thanks
They do live together from what I gathered. I am not entirely sure if she would be ‘financially dependent’ as he refuses to give her any money at all but she must be surviving somehow so I imagine they are linked for example shared food buying etc. So I guess this is dependent after all actually isn’t it.
Re your second paragraph, I definitely agree there. It all seemed a little strange to be honest. I wanted to double check the chances of UC on here and then I will speak to her about the situation again. Definitely one to keep an eye on.
Thanks
whole situation sounds to me like coercive control, and that she needs help to get out from under fairly sharpish!
They do live together from what I gathered. I am not entirely sure if she would be ‘financially dependent’ as he refuses to give her any money at all but she must be surviving somehow so I imagine they are linked for example shared food buying etc. So I guess this is dependent after all actually isn’t it.
Re your second paragraph, I definitely agree there. It all seemed a little strange to be honest. I wanted to double check the chances of UC on here and then I will speak to her about the situation again. Definitely one to keep an eye on.
Thanks
whole situation sounds to me like coercive control, and that she needs help to get out from under fairly sharpish!
Agree with Claire and Cordelia’s advice about getting out of there asap!
Regarding whether she is financially dependent on him and ‘same household’ scenario notwithstanding what appears to be ‘coercive control’ which is arguable that this one factor/signpost is not evidence in this instance of ‘cohabiting’.
I remember years ago picking up a case after from another agency after the tribunal. A married couple both on the tenancy, social housing property. There was ’ financial dependence’ on the other but it was amicable! She had no income! It was either IS incapacity claim or IR ESA and either Commissioners or UT, Sorry i can’t remember, but she had no income whatsoever.
At whichever Commissioners or UT, the DWP submission agreed with our case that the tribunal erred in law, they were separate households, and the Commissioner or UT Judge agreed with both our submissions and substituted the decision in favour of the client being entitled to IS or IR ESA. I think i have an anonymised sub i.e. leave or permission to appeal. But not a copy or reference for decision (wasn’t published either).
I had another case even further back when i worked for a MH Trust where he was financially dependent on her, he had moved in to care for her. She was in receipt of IS on incapacity grounds, Tribunal allowed her appeal.
Forgive the long winded tired response and irrelevant detail, but financial dependence can’t always be assumed to mean ‘cohabitating’ , ‘living as a married couple’ or part of the same household, even if they are living under the same roof amicably or otherwise as in this case it would appear.
R v Soc Sec Commisioner ex parte Bibi is an old case, but the principles are still relevant I think:
10. ... The letter then referred to the test that should be applied in accordance with the Adjudicator Officer’s Guide to determine whether the man and a woman who are married were still living in the same household, and proceeded as follows:
“We understand that the facts in this case are that Mrs Bibi looks after herself and her four dependant children, and two grown-up children also live with them. Mrs Bibi is presently using Family Credit and Child Benefit to support her children, she advises she had to claim Family Credit as a couple because she was refused Income Support as a single parent. She instructs that her husband makes no financial contribution to herself or to her children, although she would like him to pay maintenance, and you will see that she has authorised the Child Support Agency to be instructed.
The property that they live in is a three-storey property, which includes a shop and a kitchen on the ground floor, three bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor, and a further bedroom on the second floor. The property is owned by her husband, although she has taken steps, through Kenneth Curtis, solicitors, to register a beneficial interest.
Within the property, she and her family maintain a separate existence from her husband. He caters for himself, he buys and stores his own food, and he does not eat with the rest of them. They have separate sleeping arrangements. We have seen that she has even gone to the lengths of putting a padlock on the wardrobe and a lock on the letter box in order to protect her property and her correspondence from her husband.
She advises that she took steps to initiate divorce, but relatives and friends sought to dissuade her, and she is now making enquiries about formal separation.
She does not know her husband’s movements. She says that on a number of occasions he has been abroad, and returned from abroad and has not communicated his plans to her or to members of her family. Her immediate family we have spoken to (one son and a daughter no longer living in the property) have confirmed the extent of the breakdown in the relationship described above.”11. That information, if accurate and if accepted by the Agency or, on appeal, by any appellate tribunal considering the matter, would have gone a very long way to establishing her case. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive, in the light of the tests that are applicable, that a decision that she was still a member of the same household would have been one which could properly have been reached.
Also a good case to illustrate that if someone is refused single-person UC, and is forced to make a joint UC claim pending an appeal in order to subsist, then the couple claim shouldn’t necessarily prove fatal to that appeal.
Thanks for the info guys. Well worth making a claim then if I can persuade her to go ahead with it. Sounds like she will have to be willing to open up and give details on the nature of their relationship though as it will be investigated by DWP so whether she is up for that or not I am not sure. Good to know it’s possible and that there is case law that may be useful if this situation turns out to be similar enough. Not heard back from her yet so no more details.
I agree with ‘coercive control’, possible emotional and financial abuse to watch out for too in situations such as this.
Further to Jon’s really handy caselaw.
Couple of hastily copied and pasted bits from the sub for 2007/08 Commissioner’s case referred to in an earlier post that may be of help.
CIS/4156/2006 suggests tribunals relying to heavily on a ‘signpost’ checklist approach are erring in law. On paragraph 30 the Deputy Commissioner states, “There is no doubt that the factors referred to by the tribunal might be relied upon to reach a conclusion that the parties were living together as husband and wife. However, the tribunal also received evidence that might well have pointed to a different conclusion… [and] failed to explain whether this evidence was dismissed as unreliable or, alternatively, whether it was accepted but was outweighted by [other] contrary indications”.
CIS/4156/2006 further finds that the tribunal’s over reliance on a ‘checklist’ approach meant it failed adequately to address ‘the more fundamental question’ identified in CP/8001/1995, of why the claimant and Mr W were living together – on paragraph 35 the Deputy Commissioner writes, “In my judgement the tribunal in this case failed to deal with the question of the parties intentions. This was because the appellant’s evidence as to the circumstances in which she and Mr W came to share the same house again was not adequately dealt with by the tribunal. The tribunal should have examined those circumstances more closely, and indeed whether matters had changed at all during the period since ..”.
Hi
I just thought I’d clarify that the signposts of cohabitation are not relevant at all to this case (someone has already stated this previously in this thread but I’ll do it again as there seem to have been several references to it).
The signposts are applied to claimants who are not married or in a civil partnership, and are used to measure whether they are living together in a manner akin to a married couple.
The test for a married couple is whether they are living in the same household (see CPAG 317 - 318) which is a quite separate test from the cohabitation signposts used for unmarried couples (dealt with on pages 310 - 312).
Cheers
Alex
I spoke to this client again. Her husband is actually already claiming WTC which I presume complicates things further?
I am going to see her next week so I will check whether she is keeping a separate household in the same house but I don’t believe she is.