CCM14215 - Closing the Enquiry: Who will meet the settlement?
Who will meet the settlement will depend on the circumstances of the case.
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Single claimant – in these cases your
settlement can only be with the claimant. The position is the same
even if the reason for the settlement is you have established the
claimant was living with someone. The newly discovered partner can
never be asked to meet the settlement or even help towards it but
see CCM 8430 regarding the means of the single claimant.
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A couple who are now separated – although
they made the claim as a couple and the legislation provides for
them to be jointly and severally liable for the overpayment and the
penalty. However, if they are separated by the time you come to
settle the enquiry you must split the settlement between them.
You will be working the settlement with the objective of obtaining two separate letters of offer. How you split the settlement will depend on the case. In most cases the split will be on a 50:50 basis but you cannot ask either of them to repay an overpayment or a penalty for a fraudulent or negligently incorrect claim where they had no knowledge of the fraud or neglect and could not reasonably have been expected to know of it.
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A couple who were both aware of the incorrect
claim – Where the couple is jointly and severally
liable to repay the overpayment and are both considered to be
guilty of fraud or neglect, you will be seeking a joint letter of
offer. This will be in both of their names and will be signed by
both of them. If this is accepted, the settlement charge (the 94A)
will show both of their names and the recovery officer will then
pursue either of them or both of them to settle the charge.
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A couple where one is an innocent partner –
where you are satisfied that one of the partners did not know about
the fraud or neglect, you must not ask that partner to repay the
overpayment or pay a penalty. The settlement must be with the other
partner as if he/she was a single claimant.
In some cases there might have been more than one error and it is possible for a partner to be aware of one error but not another error. In these cases you will need to split the overpaid credits and penalties between them in a reasonable manner. You might then be asking one of them to enter into a letter of offer in their own right for the error only they knew about and then ask them to enter into a separate letter of offer in joint names. There will then be two separate settlement charges for the Accounting and Payments Service, Network Unit to pursue.
