Financial assessment where applicant has deprived themselves of resources: no disregards given

Under regulation 12, we must consider capital disposed of before an application was made.  We have to decide if

  • applicants have deprived themselves of resources that would otherwise have been taken into account in assessing their financial eligibility and any contribution payable, or
  • converted them into other resources which have to be disregarded under the regulations.

If we consider an applicant has disposed of funds in this way, regulation 12 allows us to assess their means as if they had not disposed of or converted the resources.

When considering these issues, we take into account the whether it was necessary to spend the funds in question and the timing of the disposal in relation to the knowledge that litigation was likely.

In this section