Deprivation of capital

lindor

I'm soon to receive an inheritance of around £30000. I'm on uc and will declare it as soon as it happens. Id like to return my motability car and buy a second hand car as this will give £300 extra income a month plus changes are happening soon which mean advance payments etc for motability cars will be higher. I cant find any guidance on what will be acceptable to spend if/when I get down to a level where I have to claim benefits again. Has anyone done this and found out if say £9000 would be acceptable to a decision maker ? A ten year old vehicle costs this now and I don't really want to get anything older than this as I am disabled .

Rosie_Scope

Hi @lindor, welcome to the community. Unfortunately there isn't a lot of guidance on this. But I wouldn't say you need to focus on what set amount is acceptable to spend. If you need a specific car to help you get around and that's the price you've seen for what you need, then that would likely be a good justification for spending that amount of money.

With deprivation of capital, they are often looking for things that could be seen as both unnecessary and expensive like frequent expensive holidays or lots of extravagant purchases all at once to deliberately lower your capital in order to claim.

If you're mostly spending it on things that you need and can explain this should they ask, there shouldn't be too much of an issue should you come to claim again. But I hope some of our members might have some first-hand experiences to share too ☺️