Not on ESA but received ESA50 to complete?

Please could somebody clarify the situation for me. Both my husband and I received contribution based ESA for 12 months and then our entitlement expired. My husband is registered disabled and receives DLA and pension credit for us both, and I am his carer and claim carers allowance. We both have received ESA50 forms and when I phoned DWP to ask why I was informed that the forms would have been sent out by mistake and to ignore them. When the reminder letters came from ATOS I again phoned the DWP and was given the phone number to contact ATOS. The woman at ATOS was extremely snotty and said that as we were living on benefits we had better complete the forms or risk having our money stopped.
My questions are: neither of us receive ESA, so why do we need to complete ESA50 forms?
And can ATOS have our benefits stopped?
I am so stressed about this as we had all our benefits (Pension Credit, ESA, Housing benefit and Council tax benefit) stopped in 2010 because of an error at the Pension Service, and it took nearly 4 months to get payments re-instated.
Sorry to be so long-winded but I'm so confused and don't know where to turn.
I did wonder if this was a way to check up on my husbands medical condition before his DLA is re-assessed for PIP?

lancashire-lass wrote: Please could somebody clarify the situation for me. Both my husband and I received contribution based ESA for 12 months and then our entitlement expired. My husband is registered disabled and receives DLA and pension credit for us both, and I am his carer and claim carers allowance. We both have received ESA50 forms and when I phoned DWP to ask why I was informed that the forms would have been sent out by mistake and to ignore them. When the reminder letters came from ATOS I again phoned the DWP and was given the phone number to contact ATOS. The woman at ATOS was extremely snotty and said that as we were living on benefits we had better complete the forms or risk having our money stopped.
My questions are: neither of us receive ESA, so why do we need to complete ESA50 forms?
And can ATOS have our benefits stopped?
I am so stressed about this as we had all our benefits (Pension Credit, ESA, Housing benefit and Council tax benefit) stopped in 2010 because of an error at the Pension Service, and it took nearly 4 months to get payments re-instated.
Sorry to be so long-winded but I'm so confused and don't know where to turn.
I did wonder if this was a way to check up on my husbands medical condition before his DLA is re-assessed for PIP?

Hi ll,

If your husband has reached State Pension Age, (SPA) then he could not claim ESA anyway, as it is a "working age benefit"

Can you confirm please whether he has reached SPA ?

bro58

Hi, he is 63 and turns 65 in September 2014.

Although you are no longer recieving payment, you are still classed as being entitled to ESA - crazy as that sounds! During this time you will be getting NI contributions credited on your behalf. If your condition were to worsten and you were eligible for the Support Group, payment would restart. You will be subject to periodic reassessments which might include a face-to-face 'medical'. If you don't need any further NI credits for your pension, you are perfectly entitled to cancel your ESA claim but you must understand that you would no longer able to access the Support Group at a later stage (unless you had been able to return to work and build up the necessary NI contributions again) even if your condition were to warrant it.

lancashire-lass wrote: Hi, he is 63 and turns 65 in September 2014.

Hi ll,

I'm rather cofused myself now, I'm having one of those nights.

Is your hubby still receiving NI Credits only as he has exhausted his 365 day entitlement to payment of Contribution Based ESA, but still has a "live" claim for ESA and a current assessment of WRAG, (LCW) if that were the case, then ATOS would send out a new ESA50.

bro58

OK cheers for that info - looks like I'm going to be busy filling out 2 sets of forms
Thank you for explaining that to me.