I have been summonsed to Court on the 18th September, received the documents today. Do they deliberately send such things out on a Friday so you can spend the weekend a wreck whilst waiting to get legal advice? I attended an Interview under Caution some months ago in relation to overpayment of Housing Benefit and Income Support. The discrepancies arose when I became a student in 2008 when I started a three year degree course. In amongst a hectic life bringing up two children, one of whom is Autistic I crawled my way through three years of hard slog and totally forgot to inform the benefits of my student loans. Writing this and looking back all I can think is 'you stupid cow, what were you thinking', but that's just it, I don't think I was thinking straight. Back in 2005 I left an abusive man, the father of my two eldest, I had to make us 'homeless' as he wouldn't leave the marital home and staying there was making me ill and fearful for my safety (it was very remote). The divorce happened fairly quickly and he was made to pay me my share of the house, the proceeds of which I was then forced to live off. It was in 2007 that I started claiming Income Support and Housing Benefit. I still lived my life in fear of him, for a good few years he had no idea where I lived, I would meet him away from my home to hand over the children for his access. He messed them and me around constantly, refusing to see them one week then the next week he'd be demanding to have them for longer. None of this was done amicably, it was all done in threatening text messages or phone calls where he would 'tell' me what was going to happen. He made every area of my life impossible, he reported me directly to social services on more than one occasion when he saw that was having no effect he went to the Doctors and made some terrible claims to him about my son being abused by my new boyfriend. Luckily my Doctor realised that these claims were a revenge attack and when he reported what had been said to social services he also added in that he felt the claims were false given his patients unstable nature. Meanwhile for some mad reason I thought it would be liberating to attend uni and earn a degree, prove to myself that I wasn't thick and actually had a brain after years of being run down and told 'you're useless'. I waded through tonnes of coursework and essays, each year just got more and more bogged down, I existed through each day doing the bare minimum by way of housekeeping, beating myself up all along the way that I was somehow damaging my children by not providing a spotless home and a home cooked meal every night. The first year started with my ex husband having the children every weekend, therefore the weekends were spent studying. Then something went wrong and suddenly the children wouldn't go to their dad any more, just a complete blank refusal to go. With that comes a tonne of abuse from him that I'm poisoning the children and stopping them going to him, far from it, I needed the free weekends to get through all the study. The first year and a half I had the children 24/7 then eventually they started visiting him again but on an every other weekend basis. Before I know it I'm headed into my third year of study and it's like wading through treacle. I've spoken to a tutor and told her I can't do it any more, I'm exhausted but she's good at the pep talk and the we'll help you every way we can with extensions etc. I'd also been in a relationship with an older man for a few months but that fizzled out and I ended it feeling it had nowhere to go. Term begins and lo and behold I discover in the November, two weeks before my 40th birthday that I'm pregnant. I thought I was exhausted before but the exhaustion that sets in now is unbelievable. I miss most of my remaining seminars and seem to spend all day sleeping. I get the required amount of essays done for the first half of that year and then we swing into the remaining half of the year being for dissertation. By this time I am fit for nothing, and I applied for a deferral to complete the dissertation after the birth of the baby in the June. At no time during all this did I ever imagine I'd committed benefit fraud, I admit that for years I didn't open my post and looking back now I can see that I seemed to just be a complete wreck bumbling from one day to another, I still am now. I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself and go from being angry with myself to just feelings of numbness. At the end of the day I omitted to inform them of my student loans. No one to blame but me. Nowhere on the paperwork does it give an overall figure of overpayments, money is already being taken from my benefits to start paying back what I've been overpaid. From what I can see it amounts to around £6000. I've admitted guilt, I've received the money and I failed to keep them updated, making it clear that I didn't set out to commit fraud, I was not rubbing my hands together thinking how wonderful it was to get benefits and student loans. The Court date falls on the week I am away in Scotland, my brother has booked a week away for himself, me and my sister to celebrate her 50th birthday. Now I'm worried I'll have to cancel going on the holiday, can a solicitor appear on my behalf? Worried about the outcome, have seen other threads mentioning suspended sentences etc, I have a one year old, a nine year old and a fifteen year old autistic lad, their world will fall apart if anything happens to me.