Just bumping this up as we still haven't gotten any further with the mortgage company since.

Hi, Hoping someone might be able to advise me. I am in receipt of DLA and husband gets income support and carers allowance. We get smi mortgage payments for our interest-only mortgage. I have been advised by my drs that where I am living is not suitable and I have finally decided that they are right and I would like to move. We contacted our mortgage company today. We kept being told to ring back and we spoke to 3 different advisors who all had different opinions as to whether it would be possible to port our mortgage to another property. The new property would be smaller and we would need much less of a mortgage than we have currently. One of the advisors we spoke with said that normally porting a mortgage on benefits wouldn't be possible but there was special criteria for someone who needed to move due to medical reasons. However, the final person we spoke with disagreed and was certain that in order to port a mortgage to a different property, a new application would need to be done. She said that we wouldn't be allowed to port on our current income which is solely made up of benefits. When we asked what to do, she said our options were to either stay put where we are or sell up and rent instead. We are not sure what info to believe and wondered if anyone knows if they are indeed correct and we have no hope of porting our mortgage while on benefits? Thanks in advance.

Thanks Mikey, that's great. Both forms went off recorded delivery this morning. They weren't as bad as I thought they'd be. Having struggled to complete the ESA and dreaded DLA ones before, these were a doodle. Yes, will indeed contact the mortgage etc next week and let them know, just to be on the safe side. Got three different letters from ESA this morning all about the benefit being terminated and the mortgage interest payments stopping. So, it's all systems go now.

Oh, there's one more thing I'm not too sure about before I send the forms off. They have sent a form for applying for smi mortage interest payments. We have filled it in and have it ready to send off to our mortgage company for them to fill in their bit all about the mortgage. However my husband has just said he thinks we might not need to send this as no information has changed since we first started getting these payments through being on ESA and also the fact that there will be no 13 week waiting period and the mortage payments will keep going automatically. Do you think we should send this on to the mortgage company anyway (seeing as it is for a different benefit) or should be hold off and take it for granted that they have all the info re our mortgage already?

Yes, fingers crossed it all goes smoothly now Mikey. The forms are all ready to go so will get them off by recorded delivery in the morning. I think I'll be a bit easier once they are away. I've felt in limbo today especially with the Doc calling to the house when I wasn't expecting her so will be better once IS have got the forms. Will let you know how I get on.

Thanks again Mikey and Antone. I terminated the ESA claim yesterday. Hubby also rang IS yesterday to start the claim and the forms came today. We rang the Medical Support Service and cancelled the ESA medical yesterday morning and they said that was fine. However, whoever we spoke with mustn't have notified the Dr and she landed out this afternoon (it was a home visit). Hubby explained the situation re terminating ESA and that the medical had been cancelled but she was still insisting on the medical going ahead and that it would be 'very quick'. Obviously that didn't happen but it's all been a bit stressful here this afternoon. Anyway, will fill in the IS forms this evening and get them in the post in the morning. Will keep this updated as things go along.

Ah I see Antone. Yes that makes sense. I know when my husband got CA it took months to sort out the backdate of what was owed for what days between ESA and CA. We didn't think they were ever going to get it sorted but thankfully we got there in the end. Just as well as it will make the change-over to IS a bit easier hopefully. Thanks for the heads-up. I'll make sure Hubby starts his IS claim from Thursday onwards and I will cancel ESA on Thursday as well so hopefully that will rule out any potential complications between the two regarding payments. Thanks again Antone. The advice is very much appreciated.

Thanks very much Mikey. Okay hubby will ring IS on Monday morning and get the claim started. We have an ESA payment due on Wednesday so will wait until I get that and then ring ESA and cancel the esa benefit (including the medical). I suppose it might be worth our while ringing the mortgage company just in case there is a missed payment while waiting for the IS claim to be processed. I will update here to let you know how I get on, just in case there is anyone else in the same situation it might be of help to them. Thanks again Mikey. We had had so much differing advice we didn't know where to turn so we are both very grateful to you.

Thanks very much indeed for that Mikey. That all makes sense and I'm a lot less anxious than I was this morning when the letter arrived. We are on income based ESA. I think I'll get hubby to ring IS and start the ball rolling with the claim. Someone in IS did tell us a couple of months back that if were to claim IS then we would need to come off ESA first. In other words ring ESA and tell them we no longer wish to claim and then ring IS immediately and start that claim with them. They said IS would be back-dated to the date we first rang and requested the forms. However you were saying that ESA continued to be paid until IS process the IS claim? The only worry now I have is that my ESA medical is next week so not sure what to do about that. I'm thinking I shoud ring the medical assessment crowd and tell them my husband has started a claim for IS and therefore I won't need the medical? However, if ESA is paid until the IS claim is processed would the ESA payments for this period then stop? I should explain that I have already had to cancel the medical several times as they sent three appointments all within weeks of one another. First one when my Dad was very ill, second at the time he died and they sent another appointment again just days later just after his funeral:(. So the three appointments were all cancelled. I don't think they will let me cancel again without stopping the benefit.

Thankyou very much Mikey. I'm so sorry, I'm just not thinking today at all. I forgot to put in the original post that my husband is already claiming CA for me. He applied and got this a couple of months ago when my DLA changed to medium care.Before that I was only awarded low mobility. I've already been to hell and back with ESA since first started claiming it, nd that's without even having gone through the medical yet,so it would be a relief to come off it. I couldn't even begin to list the catalogue of mistakes and disasters with them. I think that's why I'm so worried about changing over, that someone somewhere down the line will say we aren't entitiled to do that or have our SMI payments stopped. What made me worried was the advisor from Disability Alliance who said there was a 'loophole' in the system that prevented us from switching over. I did explain to her that it would be my husband would be main claimant on IS, not me, but she said it didn't matter and they would refuse the IS application because I was coming off ESA voluntarily. I thought this couldn't be right as surely it is up to people to decide which benefit they want to claim so long as they are entitled to it. The other worry was someone in IS said she thought we'd have to wait for the 13 week qualifying period for SMI as we were changing main claimant from myself to hubby to a different benefit. We'd be in a bad way if we had to wait for 13 weeks as we couldn't afford payments for that long.

Hello, I’m hoping someone might be able to advise me on this. I am currently in receipt of ESA and have the dreaded medical coming up. I have heard some horror stories and am pretty sure they will turn me down as my illness is mental health related. I was recently awarded DLA and I am also scared they would contact them (again have heard terrible stories) and that would be cut too. My query is the following: I get ESA along with DLA – medium care rate, low mobility rate. My husband looks after me and I claim ESA couple rate for the two of us. I am the main claimant for ESA. Can we move to Income Support? My husband would be the main claimant as he is my career and I receive DLA medium care rate. So I think he should be entitled to claim because of this? We get our mortgage SMI paid by ESA at the moment. If we move to Income Support would there be a linking rule that allows us to continue getting SMI without having to go thought the 13 week waiting period? The complication here is that we would be moving from a benefit (ESA) where I was the main claimant to a benefit (IS) where my husband would be the main claimant. We have rang IS a couple of times and got completely conflicting information. One lady said we could change over and not have to wait the 13 weeks for SMI payments whereas another lady said we couldn’t. We have also rang disability and career helplines. Again completely different answers. One said there was a loophole that meant we would not be allowed to change from ESA to IS whereas another said there would be no problem as I am in receipt of medium care rate which entitles my husband to claim IS for both of us, but she wasn’t sure about the 13 week waiting period for SMI. Any help with this would be very much appreciated as we don’t really know who or what to believe and we don’t want to make the wrong decision.