Parent Claiming Rent allowance when you own the house.

[Flukey_Villa]

Hi All,
For a number of years my wife and I have been paying the mortage on the house my mother is living in. The house is in my name and my mother has been making a small contribution when she can to the monthly payments.
My wife and I live in a different house.

As my mothers contirbution has been very little we have never registered her payments as extra income and she has never looked to get rent allowance.

Would we be able to claim for rent allowance in order to claim some of the payments we have been making?
Also, is it possible to claim back for a number of years?

 

[gipimann]

Is your mother renting from you - i.e. is there a lease or tenancy agreement in place? If there isn't, then it will not be considered a "bona fide" tenancy which is one of the criteria for Rent Supplement.

There are other criteria for claiming Rent Supplement - check out www.welfare.ie for more details.

 

[Flukey_Villa]

Thanks for the reply Gipimann,

At the moment, I dont have one in place. How formal does one of these need to be, is there a template somewhere I could use or do I need to get professionals involved?

 

[lff12]

I am not sure, but I understand part of the criteria of rent subsidy is that it is paid to a 3rd party to whom you are not related. You would need to have evidence of a formal tenancy being in place for at least 6 months, i.e. a lease, rent book, etc.

 

[gipimann]

It is true that Rent Supplement would not generally be considered for adult children renting from parents (and it's not payable to adult children living at home with family), however I'm not sure how the reverse would be looked at as I've never dealt with such a case before.

One of the new criteria for qualifying for Rent Supplement is that the tenant has to have rented for 6 months before being entitled to apply.

The lease/tenancy agreement would need to be formal, think there's a standard layout/content, I'm sure one of the landlords on AAM can advise you on that.