Forum Home → Discussion → Work capability issues and ESA → Thread
Joint or single claim
My client is married and lives with her husband. Husband has quite severe learning difficulties and has a social worker helping him; he is also covered by a Court of Protection Order (which I have not seen, but apparently arose due to financial exploitation by other family members, not the wife). The social worker (acting for the local authority) will only discuss the husband’s issues with him and not his wife, even though they live together. Currently the two have separate benefit claims both for ESA, which the social worker is aware of; the problem is that the Local Authority have full control over the husband’s finances and I have discussed this with a local solicitor’s firm who suggested that claims should stay separate due to issues which would arise when dividing the payment on a joint claim (the Local Authority would effectively have to receive the payment). I would be grateful for any advice as to whether separate claims are in order and if so at what point (presumably the ending of the Court of Protection Order?) the claims should be switched to joint.
My client is married and lives with her husband. Husband has quite severe learning difficulties and has a social worker helping him; he is also covered by a Court of Protection Order (which I have not seen, but apparently arose due to financial exploitation by other family members, not the wife). The social worker (acting for the local authority) will only discuss the husband’s issues with him and not his wife, even though they live together. Currently the two have separate benefit claims both for ESA, which the social worker is aware of; the problem is that the Local Authority have full control over the husband’s finances and I have discussed this with a local solicitor’s firm who suggested that claims should stay separate due to issues which would arise when dividing the payment on a joint claim (the Local Authority would effectively have to receive the payment). I would be grateful for any advice as to whether separate claims are in order and if so at what point (presumably the ending of the Court of Protection Order?) the claims should be switched to joint.
The Court of Protection order won’t end unless the husband can be shown to have capacity to deal with his own financial affairs, which possibly won’t be happening if he has severe learning difficulties.
Who is the deputy? i assume, from what you say, the local authority? and one wonders why not if she wasn’t exploiting him! but that’s a separate issue.
and i cannot see how the involvement of the CoP could have any relevance to the application of normal benefit rules
The CoP is to protect the person without capacity, not to overrule the operation of social security legislation ...
so whatever should happen in your client’s situation, should be happening…
and perhaps you and the social worker should, therefore, sit down and do the proper calculations - if the social worker won’t, then one could argue that the LA is not doing it’s duty as CoP deputy, since the CoP deputy should, i would think, be maximising the protected party’s income where possible
Look at http://www.dosh.org/ for some useful info.
(declaration of interest, I’m the Chair of the company)
Look at http://www.dosh.org/ for some useful info.
(declaration of interest, I’m the Chair of the company)
Gareth, my organisation ENABLE Scotland is a charity for people with a learning disability.
We are able to offer benefit checks to people all over Scotland and basic money advice to people in Glasgow and north Lanarkshire.
just some shameless self promotion there if you think any of the people you come across via DOSH might benefit from any of our services.