Hi,

this is going to be a long shot as I believe we're in a bit of a unique situation but someone out there might be in a similar position and be able to offer some advice.

My wife is hoping to start a PhD in Scotland in September, leaving her 25K job of two years. She is over 25, if this makes a difference.

We currently have one child and another will come along before this time.

I'm a full time parent as financially it made sense for my wife to go to work and for me to look after the children whilst they are young.

She should be getting around 13 and a half thousand (increasing) from the first year in funding. However, this is obviously not a lot to support a family on and as our children are very small I will still be at home looking after them.

I was wondering if anyone knew what we might be entitled to apart from Child Tax Credits and whether the funding (from the university) will be taken into account when they look at income.

Government bodies I've approached (including CAB) haven't been very forthcoming with information - as they seem to want us to already be in this position before they can tell us whether or not we will be entitled to anything. Which strikes me as bizarre!

Anyway, if this makes sense, and if there's anyone in a similar situation and can give advice I would be very appreciative.

Thanks.

When I left my full-time EPSRC-funded PhD 13 years ago my husband was able to claim an additional dependents' allowance on his EPSRC-funded PhD to help support me. A dependent was a spouse or child not earning. Not much, but every bit helped. You say your wife's funding is from the university. I don't suppose there's any provision for allowance for dependents?

Afraid that I can't advise on benefits, though my experience was that we weren't eligible for anything, because my husband was a full-time student. Things might have changed for the better.

I believe that they don't take maintenance grants into account when looking at your income for Tax Credit purposes. Are you going to be going back to work (as depending on the hours you do, you're eligible for more money in the form of working tax credit)?

Otherwise you at least should be eligible for Income Support and the associated benefits that come with it (but check this because eligibility changes all the time), however your wife won't be as a full-time student. The only thing I can suggest is going back to the CAB and pretending you are in that situation already! Bureaucratic madness :-)

thanks for the replies so far. :-)

I wouldn't be going back to work until our children are of school age. The amount that I could earn would barely cover child care (presently) and we want one of us to bring up the children in their early years.

I was hoping that I would be able to claim income support along with child tax credit (which would be a given). I'm not sure if I would be entitled to housing benefit or council tax benefit.

I am of the understanding that my wife would not be entitled to benefits as she would be in full time education. This would be fine as long as the money she receives for funding wouldn't reduce any benefits that I receive.

I think part of the problem of getting answers at the moment from benefit agencies (or indeed universities) is having to take into consideration maternity leave for my wife, who if doesn't start the PhD in September would still be on maternity leave with her currently employer and the fact that I stay at home and raise the children (and of the male variety of human) - yet will have to look for work when my wife is on maternity leave. This complicates the matters more because none of this fits easily on governmental forms which tend to be "yes or no" forms, with little room for grey, complicated, non-atypical circumstance.

I hope that makes sense? A little bit of a rant I know, but it feels good to get it off my chest!

Yeah unless she's a lone parent, benefits for full-time students are pretty non-existent. If you do get income support then you will get things like council tax benefit/housing benefit as part of that.

You're right enough though - unless you are actually in that situation it's impossible to get straight answers from anyone to allow you to plan, and the maternity leave aspect is going to baffle them all even more. Have you been on the Directgov website? It can take a bit of digging sometimes but most of the information you need will be on there. Also the student support section of your wife's prospective university may be able to offer some advice too.

Hi
When I was funded we received CTC and WFTC - but WFTC was based on the fact that my partner was working. However, none of the PhD money counted towards the tax credit calculations as they only take into account taxable income (this was a couple of years back so double check). This meant that we managed pretty well - my partner has a relatively low wage (less than 20k pa) so we got a fair whack of CTC and WFTC.

Could you consider maybe working for 16+ hrs pw? This (from memory) would kick start the WFTC and maybe this is time when your partner could be at home with the kids (evenings?).

You could also be entitled to a 25% reduction on your council tax bill, if one is working and one is f/t student. It took a little while for our CT dept to get their head around the PhD idea but once they head a form stamped by the grad school, they just did it all annually.

There is the chance that I can do some part time work - though it would be minimum wage and not for many hours. As I've said I'll have young children to look after, one will be 2 and a bit and the other one only a few months old. As my wife will be working in an office for many hours of the day she'll rely on me to bring our youngest in so they can be breast fed.

Of course this doesn't rule out weekend/evening work - though as we would be moving from England to Scotland there will be a time of adjustment even before I could look for part time work.

Thanks again everyone for your replies, this is the most help that we have received.:-)

Hi,

Yes, the work might be low-paid but it would trigger the payment of WFTC, if it was over a certain number of hours. If my partner had not been working we would have had to live on the studentship only - his working meant we were significantly better off, even though his pay is low.

Good luck with it all.