You live with 2 or more other adults

You are regarded as sharing a household if:

• you live in the same house with one or more other persons aged 18 or over and
• all of you contribute to the household costs. This means that we regard you as ‘caring for each other’. People can care for each other in 2 ways:
  • by contributing to the household costs, such as housing costs, general living costs and other costs, or
  • by doing general household tasks such as cleaning, shopping, doing the paperwork and cooking, and looking after each other when someone is ill

contributions to costs or caring for each other are not taken into account if they are very small or infrequent.

How many people contribute to the household costs

• If only one of the persons you live with contributes to the household costs, you will be considered to be living in a shared household, and you cannot get an Anw benefit.
• If two or more of the other persons you live with contribute to the household costs, we do not regard this as a shared household. This means that you can get an Anw benefit. If the persons you live with are aged 27 or over, we refer to them as ‘co-residents’. A co-resident can be anybody, including your child, or your father or mother. If you live with a co-resident, you will get a reduced Anw benefit, providing you meet the other conditions for the benefit.
• If none of the persons you live with contribute to the household costs, we do not regard this as a shared household. You will then be able to get an Anw benefit, providing you meet the other conditions for the benefit.

Example

You receive an Anw benefit and your children aged 14 and 27 are living with you. Your brother (aged 52) moves in with you after his divorce. Hij occasionally helps pay for the shopping but generally leads his own life. Your daughter has a job and contributes to the household costs and helps you with the housework.

Because your brother’s contributions to the household costs are small and infrequent, you are not regarded as having a shared household with your brother. Your daughter does contribute to the household, but you cannot have a shared household with your own child. Your brother and your daughter are therefore regarded as co-residents. This means you can keep your Anw benefit, but the amount will be lower.

Suppose your daughter did not have a job, but was still in school. In that case, she would not be regarded as a co-resident because children receiving education do not count as co-residents. However, your Anw benefit would still be reduced because your brother would still count as a co-resident.

If you rent out part of your accommodation to someone, or if you rent accommodation yourself and live in the same house as your landlord or landlady, you may have a ‘commercial relationship’.

Whether you can get an Anw benefit will then depend on who you share your house with. We will look at whether you can be regarded as having a shared household with these other persons.

You have a commercial relationship

You will have a commercial relationship if:

• you share a house with one or more other people: you rent a room to someone or you rent a room yourself, or you pay for board and lodging or have taken in a boarder.
• you and the other person or persons have a strictly commercial (businesslike) relationship with each other
• there is a written agreement about this between you and the other person or persons
• you can prove this by showing a contract and bank statements

When will you not be regarded as having a commercial relationship?

In the following situations, you cannot be considered to have a purely commercial relationship for the purposes of the Anw:

• if you were previously married to or living with the other person
• if you have a child together, or the child of one of you has been recognized by the other
• if you and the other person have a cohabitation contract that was drawn up by a notary public
• if your household has already been classed as a joint household under another Act or scheme

Use our model agreements

You can download a model agreement that meets all the requirements of a commercial relationship.

If you live with someone because either they or you need extensive care, you will not be regarded as having a shared household with that person. By extensive care, we refer to a situation in which a person is not able to run his or her own household without daily assistance. 

Whether you can get an Anw benefit will then depend on who you share your house with. We will look at whether you can be regarded as having a shared household with these other persons.