Is spousal maintenance for a loan taken as income for Pension Credit?

I have a customer who gets a Court Order for maintenance from her ex-husband. Several years ago she got into debt & took out a personal loan which she could not keep up. Her ex arranged to pay her a monthly voluntary sum on top of the Court Order to pay the loan & the amount he pays goes out of her account direct to the lender. Does anyone know of anything in the regs which would allow this to be disregarded as income for PC purposes. I can’t find anything.

I don’t think you will find anything voluntary payments from a spouse/civil partner or former spouse/civil partner count as income for PC.

Thanks for this.

As Tony says, if it’s paid directly to the lender and it’s for a loan in joint names, I can’t see it being counted as income. If it’s a loan in her name, it’s not so straight forward.

You could argue that payments carry an impressed trust and are therefore not income.  This is the Quistclose priciple (See CF/21/1989)

CFC/21/1989 is in the toolkit area of rightsnet

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/pdfs/cfc/21_89.pdf