Universal Credit - Private Pension Lump Sum

Hi all

This might be an unusual question, so apologies in advance if so.

I am presently on long-term sick leave and in receipt of UC. I am now in the latter stages of being medically retired on the grounds of severe ill health. When my private pension kicks in it will include a lump sum. This lump sum will go towards paying off my outstanding mortgage and other debts that I have incurred whilst being on sick leave and in receipt of nil pay.

After the debt of my mortgage, the vast majority of the other financial debts are to my family. The process of my medical retirement has taken some considerable time, and in approximately half that time I have been on nil pay. The outcome is that most of these financial debts to family members are quite substantial amounts.

My question therefore is the following: Will I need to provide the DWP with a paper trail (in the form of individual receipts) proving where the majority of my lump sum has gone?

Many thanks in anticipation of your assistance.

Kindest regards

Pacaho

As I understand it you are allowed to use a lump sum to pay off debts, this is classed as essential expenditure, I think they'd probably want to see some kind of proof, in the case of a family member they might write you a letter for them or invite the DWP to contact them for confirmation, if they kept any kind of record of amounts owing as they accrued this would be useful evidence, basically I think it'd be best to have this as watertight as possible so that there isn't any doubt, so if loans were arranged by text message or email to a 3rd party provider like gmail for instance that would be fairly clear evidence that a loan was arranged at that time, then they might also have bank statements etc that show the money was transferred to you or withdrawn, I don't know how much evidence you'd need in practice but it's going to be better to have it than not. you might not need to collect everything at this point but important that noone involved deletes or throws anything away, possibly for several years.

Hi Gary

Thank you for the reply. Regarding NS ESA, I've received UC from the outset. I wasn't even aware that NS ESA was an option.

Kindest regards
Pacaho

Thank you for your reply and advice.

Kindest regards
Pacaho