Illness Benefits

Hi, my husband had a tumor removed in July 2007, and was off work for 6 months. During this time we had our Mortgage payments frozen. Unfortunaltely he has been off work since 27th December due to further related health issues and spent 8 weeks in hospital. There is no sign of him returning to work any time soon as he still taking high doses of morphine. He is receiving illness benefit and I job share and work 16 hours one week and 24 the next. ( The Company he works for has just gone to a 3 day week )

1. What are the changes of our mortgage lender freezing the mortgage payments again ( I am a little worried about contacting them again during this climate)
2. Also our life cover doubled to 184.00euro per month due to the Tumor ( not cancer) the last time
3. Is there any other assistance we could be claiming while he is off work.
4. We have 2 children aged 14 and 9

Your query is not all proper to this forum so you may want to split it into a few? . Regarding the SW end (query 3) , you possibly can qualify for FIS if your average hours per fornight is over 38.

Why dont you look through your life cover policy, mine has a critical illness cover that we get a lump sum of €25,000 if god forbid either of us were taken ill with cancer etc, any chance you might have this in your policy?

Your joking, could not get critical cover now. They only renewed our policy for the next 9 years not the next 18 to run with the motgage as husband now seen as a high risk !!! He never even had Cancer I even asked what would have happened if he had had Cancer and they told me that they would not have covered him at all

justasking2,

I can relate to your story very well, I was diagnosed with M.S suddenty in late 2007 having been hospitalisd for 15 days.
I was contracting so had no income and lost my contract. I had zero income from the welfare as I was short some stamps in 2005 so I was not entitled to ANY sick pay or Illness benefit. I contacted my Insurance Company and they were very sympathetic and appoligetic and also said I was not covered. I had never claimed ANYTHING off the welfare all my life and have always worked. I am in my early 40's now.

I dropped my policy into my Solicitor for a few days and when he contacted me I went to see him. He laughed and told me that an Insurance Company will try their utter best not to pay up but 'I am fully covered by my policy'. 4 months later I received a massive cheque and am sorted now. My premium is void now so I have no monthly payment. Once you have 260 months(5 years) stamps since you started work in this country you ARE entitled to welfare but they will not tell you
this(as I was not told this at the time).

If I were you I would seek legal advice ...

Your options are ...
1. Apply for to move from Illness to Invalidity Pension
2. Apply for the 'Household Benefit Package'
3. Apply for 'Family Income Supplement'
You will get TV Licence/Gas/E.S.B/Phone paid e.t.c, theres lots of perks.
You also get a Free Travel pass with Invalidity(it's a long term illness), that's free travel for you and you partner/spouse countrywide, Dart/Luas/Bus/Train e.t.c

It's a long journey to get all this sorted but it's well worth it.


Regards,
Alanya

Thanks for the advise Alanya, will check out the Social site and see if there is anything else we can claim for.

Our mortgage cover was death only and not critical illness so don't think we would be covered.

Any way thanks again for the advise will look into it and fingers crossed will not end up as a long term sickness, and will get back to work this year.

justasking2,

That is very costly for life cover, life cover is only 32.99 per month.
Contact you local Welfare Officer and they will pay the Interest on your Mortgage, works out at about half your mortgage payment. It is means tested so be very careful what you declare. If I were you I would follow this up ASAP.

Also if your husband has a pension he is entitled to withdraw it on health grounds.

Alanya.

alanya said:

It is means tested so be very careful what you declare.

Click to expand...

What do you mean by this?

I mean that anything that has to be declared MUST be declared