Client came in with letter from DWP demanding repayment of £1500 overpaid for retirement pension and DLA paid following the death of her husband.

Client was not legally aidable and in a rush I fitted in an appointment and drafted an appeal against the letter (there were lots of mitigating circumstances).

Had a reply in less than two weeks later saying they are not pursuing the overpayment, which so shocked me that I have now properly read the original letter, which I would like to share with you. I am sorry if you have read all of this before.

It comes from Debt Management (Sf) in Darlington (although the fax number is for Manchester). It says:

"About the Retirement Pension and Disability Living Allowance we paid to Mr X

I am sorry to hear that Mr X has died. I apologise for having to get in touch with you at this time <1 month following cessation of payment of RP and DLA>, but we have to let you know about his benefit as soon as we can.

I am writing to you now because we carried on paying Retirement Pension and Disability Living Allowance of £1800 to Mr X after he died. We have to ask you to pay back this money because it is not part of Mr X's estate.

Paying us back

Please pay £1800 as soon as you can. The notes with this letter tell you how you can pay us."

There are then notes and a 'schedule of overpayment', which only lists RP overpaid.

The more I read this, and the letter telling ME the outcome ("Please could you inform Mrs Y of the outcome of this appeal") of it all the much less happy I am.

The letter contains no appeal rights. I twigged this thankfully a day after I'd sent the appeal form or I might not have sent it off in the first place. Initially I thought it might be one of those unappealable decisions or bank error clawback nightmare thingies. But now I think it's the other way around - the DWP didn't have any basis to write the letter. You can't appeal something that doesn't exist.

The sentence that is most objectionable is "We have to ask you to pay back this money because it is not part part of Mr X's estate."

The 'have' in the first clause implies a duty in the 'ask' and effectively turns it into a demand. And then the causation of this demand is predicated on the statement that 'it is not part of Mr X's estate'.

If a payment is made into a deceased person's bank account I cannot see how it is not part of their estate (although I can see where this comes from - how can you _give_ something to a dead person?).

Recovery from Estate cannot happen until probate is granted so this letter tries to get around proper distribution.

It just seems like demanding money with menaces from someone who is depserately vulnerable.

Has anyone had any other dealings on this point?

I had an interesting conversation recently with a person from the recovery from estate's section of the DWP.

I asked her what would be the likelihood of them attempting to recover through the courts from an personal administrator where they had not placed the appropriate adverts for creditors in the appropriate media and the estate had subsequently been settled.

Her response was "how would we know?" Only where probate is granted do they find out if there is an estate because they routinely search the register.

So if there is an estate from which an O/P can be recovered the chances are the DWP will not find out where an informal administrator handles the estate. Food for thought?

Regards
Paul

From the CAB information system:

"Probate may not be needed where:-


the property in the estate is made up of cash (that is bank notes and coins) and personal possessions such as a car, furniture, jewellery


all the property in the estate is held in joint names as joint tenants. This means the property automatically becomes wholly owned by the surviving joint tenant


For more information, see 11.5.18.8 Sharing owner occupied accommodation

all personal property and possessions are held in joint names, for example, bank accounts


the amount of money held in bank and building society accounts, national savings accounts, pension funds, and by insurance companies is under £5,000 (but see paragraph 20). This applies even if the total value of the estate is more than £5,000


the personal representative discovers that the estate is insolvent, that is, there is not enough money in the estate to pay all the debts, taxes and expenses


where a nomination agreement exists. These agreements could only be made before 1981. They meant that the owner of the property nominated that it should be paid to a particular person in the event of death. "

So, pretty limited then! There's a large amount of diminishing returns here and it's no point trying to chase something that doesn't exist. They must name match deceased DWP claimants' names with registered probate. If probate has been granted then the estate must be more than £5000 in the bank and therefore worthy of potential investigation.

It's all always struck me as very shady and I really object to my taxes funding it.

Thanks Paul