PIP payments continued after date of death

Hi Aeowen,
I am sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. Times like these are always difficult, and generate a lot of paperwork. It is especially difficult when the coroner becomes involved.
Please see the attached link:
www.gov.uk/after-a-death/when-a-death-is-reported-to-a-coroner
This information suggests that when the coroner does become involved, you can get an interim death certificate which you can you to register the death with the 'Tell us once' service.
I would suggest you try and establish whether an interim certificate was ever issued, and whether the Registrar was consequently informed. I suspect that this may have been missed.

If you have told DWP that someone has died then they should stop making further payments. Sometimes a payment has been processed will be still paid because it has been done just before you tell DWP that the person had died, and hence has already gone through. However, if more payments continue afterwards, then this is clearly official error, as DWP have a duty to only pay benefit when this is lawful. Repeated payments to a dead person would not be lawful.


This is the link to the Money Saving Expert - for some reason the previous link did not work -
www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2022/01/d...y-pension-or-benefi/

I agree with Martin Lewis - when official error occurs because DWP have been informed that someone has died and payments continue this is clearly official error. Mr Lewis suggests you ignore the recovery letter, but adds
"If you are not happy doing that then write back asking what statutory power the DWP is relying on to recover the money. It will then respond to say it has no power. You can then confidently ignore the payment demand. The DWP also cannot use common law to recover the debt."

This would be something for either an Executor /next of kin to deal with.

However, if DWP were not told by the Registrar or next of kin, then there wouldn't necessarily be official error as DWP wouldn't know anything had happened. This scenario is more difficult.
Maybe you will need to clarify if eg other benefits such as ESA, State Pension, Housing Benefit continued to be paid. If any one of these (or other) benefits ceased then it is highly likely that DWP was informed (Housing Benefit comes from the Local Authority, but most Councils have an exchange of information with DWP.) If the LA is aware ask them when they became aware and if they told DWP. It doesn't matter who told DWP - once they are aware payments should stop. It may also be worthwhile contacting HMRC and ask similar questions about if they knew of the death, how and did they inform DWP.

Worse case scenario is that you may have to repay the money, but it is certainly worthwhile doing some investigation here to see if you do not actually have to repay.
You/next of kin may need to seek detailed advice from a local advice centre such as CAB.

I hope this helps.
LL26