Access Benifit without effecting future EEA3 & EEA4

[swordfish]

hello, Im non EU and my wife is EU citizen. we both working and get our eea1 and eea2. me and my wife came to UK together last year. I entered with EEA FP. MY eea2 will expire in 2019. my wife will go her maternity on february 2015. So i would like to know what benefit we can apply without effecting our EEA3 and EEA4 application? thanx

[ecogle]

Hi,
You can enjoy all the benefits but make sure your spouse maintain her treaty rights all the time.
Regards
Ecogle

[swordfish]

hi. thanx for reply. our plan is to claim benefit untill she go back to her job after maternity leave. it will help us so much financially. living in london with minimum wages is so difficult so what benefit she can claim WITHOUT effecting our residence status? thanx.

[rosebead]

She and you can claim social assistance benefits if she maintains "worker status". Social assistance benefits are usually means-tested benefits such as tax credits, housing and council tax benefit, income support, and income-based jobseekers allowance.

If she's made enough National Insurance contributions, she's also entitled to contributions-based benefits such as contributions-based Jobseekers Allowance. I'd imagine she can claim Statutory Maternity Pay if she is an employee and has made enough NI contributions, or Maternity Allowance if she hasn't.

You can keep worker status on maternity leave even if you quit your job according to a new CJEU case law, Case C-507/12 Saint Prix, as long as it's only for a reasonable period which the case law didn't define.

You can also keep worker status if you are involuntarily unemployed as long as you register as a jobseeker. In that situation you can keep worker status for 6 months if your job was for less than a year, and indefinitely if you worked for more than a year.