General Chat

Oh dear. It probably cost a great deal more than £1 to do all that!

DWP took my father's last OAP back from his 'frozen' bank account without any official notification. Getting on for 12 months later they returned it to the Probate Solicitor again without an explanation :-S

My Mum passed away just over a year ago.

Whilst the winding up of her estate was relatively straightforward, it was still the best part of 4 months before we received the Grant of Probate, allegedly because of the workload at the probate office.

At last, we thought, now we can get on with sorting everything out.

Not to be, as a few days later we received a letter from the DWP advising that they had started an investigation into the amount of Pension Credit that had been paid in the months before her death, and asked us to provide details of her assets at the time of her death. This we duly did by return and they told us to expect a reply after 21 days. They then asked for further information which we duly sent, again advising they would be in touch after 21 days.

They subsequently advised there had been an over payment, which would require a recalculation, and they would be in touch again, after 21 days. I would also mention at this point that letters arrived in the post exactly one week after they were dated, so in practice, we had to wait 28 days for each reply.

The recalculation duly took place after which there was a further wait of over a month whilst it was checked. Whilst all this was taking place we were strongly advised not to distribute the estate to the beneficiaries.

Eventually we received a claim, which worked out she had been overpaid Pension Credit in the sum of £1 per day after moving to her care home. The overpayment had to be paid back within 28 days of the date of their letter, which allowing for the 7 days it took the claim letter to reach us, gave us - you guessed it 21 days.....!