Crowdfunding and capital rules

Has anyone dealt with cases where someone has in excess of £16k as a result of crowd funding for private medical treatment. I don’t know very much about the status of money raised by crowd funding and whether it would come under Trusts or charity. Could not see anything in the guidance- any views much appreciated

The list of disregarded capital is in Schedule 10 of the UC Regs.

I can’t see anything on that list that would cover these so they’re probably going to be treated as a normal capital resource available to your client.

If you’re crowd-funding there is surely a discussion to be had about the point at which you “have” any capital? The money is effectively paid to a web site and handed over when a target is reached. I think there’s an argument you don’t have any capital until that handover and if you get your timing right in terms of assessment periods and lay out the cash on the medical treatment as quickly as possible then the issue ought perhaps to not even come up.

If you’ve taken steps to receive the capital; have received the capital but have not yet used it for its intended purpose then it would surely count as capital at that point but not before?

Could you argue that ‘capital’ acquired via crowdfunding for a specific purpose is actually to be treated as a trust for a specific purpose and therefore is not the capital of the claimant?  There used to be many a conversation on here about whether monies given to claimants for specific purposes could be treated as a ‘Quistclose Trust’ so might be worth a search.