Here's the situation: my client lives with her two children and has been claiming income support and full HB/CTB etc as a lone parent. Recently she married her long term boyfriend (also the father of her children). However he has never lived with them and still doesn't. He lives a couple of hundred miles away with his parents as he works there and can't afford to leave yet. He earns about £300 a week, and he hopes to move in with his wife and kids in 6 months or so. At the moment he visits every couple of weeeks to see them.
Her income support has been stopped on the grounds that she now has a partner who earns, and her tax credits are also being reassessed on that basis. HB seem fairly content to treat her as still single. So who's in the right?
I know that for HB and IS there are rules on temporary absence where couples are treated as the same household, but surely that can only apply where living together is already the norm. Looking at the tax credit rules though its a bit murky, and I can't figure out if they count as partners or not. If they do, could they claim WTC and CTC as a couple, while she gets IS on her own?
any thoughts appreciated!
|