Hi all,
Wondering if anyone knows what to expect or has been in/knows of a similar situation.
In a nutshell, my Grandfather died. He's split his relatively small estate between his three kids, one of whom is my father, who is registered disabled. He has been in receipt of DLA/PIP for the past thirty five years and also gets ESA. According to the DWP, he's partly contribution based and partly income based, but they classify it as income based for some unexplained reason.
I know any inheritance he gets won't matter to PIP but it will potentially impact on his ESA as it'll be over 16k by a couple of grand.
This leaves me with a couple of questions....
1) Am I correct in saying that ESA may allow the inheritance to be spent on "disability related needs"? And if so, Do the DWP decide what is considered a "disability related need"? If so, is there a list I can find, or is it at their discretion?
2) As my father is aging and his condition is declining, he is desperately in need of downstairs accommodation and bating facilities (which the council won't do as he owns his own home) - Does anyone know if he would he be able to spend some/all of the inheritance on paying to have a small extension put on the rear of his home to improve his quality of life, without losing his ESA?
2) If he can do this without impacting on his ESA payments, would he need to get some kind of permission/confirmation from the DWP before spending this inheritance on it? Or could he just go ahead with it and then justify it later?
3) If the DWP won't allow for any such works, and cut his ESA when getting wind of the inheritance, how does spending the money impact on claiming in the future? For example, if he got, let's say, 20k....ESA stopped, he then spent 18k on an extension, leaving him under the threshold for claiming ESA - what would happen? I assume he'd need to reapply, but is there a waiting period? Would he potentially face rejection for spending the money quickly?
4) Would using any (remaining) inheritance to pay off some small unsecured debts and/or the rest of his mortgage be classified as "deprivation of capital" and thus stop his ESA payments too?
I know I should really ask the DWP directly, but I really would like to avoid getting them on the scent of money possibly coming his way before the will has entered probate. He's completely unaware of any potential issues with spending the money his dad left him, and I haven't got the heart to tell him in the midst of his grief that he might end up worse off for being left something.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks for reading.
