You live with 1 other adult

You are regarded as sharing a household if:

• you live in the same house with someone who is 18 or over, and
• you both 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.

There are 2 different situations:

Situation 1
The person you live with contributes to the household costs. We regard this as a shared household. This means that you cannot get an Anw benefit.

Situation 2
The person you live with does not 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 person you are living with is 27 or over, this person is called a ‘co-resident’. A co-resident can be anybody, including your child, or your father or mother. If you live with a co-resident, you may be able to get a reduced amount of Anw benefit, providing you meet the other conditions for the benefit.

Example

You already receive an Anw benefit. Your children aged 14 and 17 are living at home with you. Your brother, aged 52, gets divorced and moves in with you. He contributes to the household costs and does some of the cooking, shopping and odd jobs around the house. We see this as ‘contributing to the household’. Because you ‘share a household’ with your brother, your Anw benefit will stop.

What if your brother only pays something towards the costs but does nothing else to help in the home? We still regard this as ‘contributing to the household’. Because you ‘share a household’ in this way, your Anw benefit will stop.

If your brother makes little or no contribution to the household, financial or otherwise, he is regarded as a ‘co-resident’. We do not see this as ‘sharing a household’. This means you can still receive an Anw benefit, but the amount of your benefit will go down.

If you rent out part of your house to someone, or if you rent accommodation yourself and live in the same house as your landlord or landlady, you probably have a commercial relationship with each other. A commercial relationship is a business relationship. If you have a commercial relationship with someone, you will not be considered to be living in a shared household for the purposes of the Anw. You will then be entitled to an Anw benefit.

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

If you live with someone because either they or you need extensive care, you can keep your Anw benefit, but the amount will be lower than for a person living alone. 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.