advice urgently needed for 95yr old ITALIAN disabled lady

hello, i apologise if this is the wrong place to post but we are really struggling to find advice, the situation is as follows..my mother in law ( who lives with us) is disabled and is 95yrs old she is italian and does not speak any english at all, my wife is italian but only speaks italian ( cannot read it) and i am english, we keep receiving letter from somewhere called INPS.IT which i believe is the pensions office in ITALY but we have no idea what these letters are saying, i have done a translation through GOOGLE translater and i think it is saying that unless she fills in this latest form she will have her pension stopped ( the form is  titled  RED/EST-ita COD C1520 ).. i have searched the INPS.IT website but it seems they have no email address to contact them through ( i have searched everywhere), we have also received letters in the past from CITIBANK concerning sending information about PROOF OF LIFE which we have sent back but those letters were in ITALIAN and ENGLISH  and so we could understand them, we have tried to phone the local italian embassy person ( patronata) but for over two weeks no-ones answers the phone, could someone please help/advise what this latest letter is about and how we can actually contact by email the INPS office in italy, i thank you very much in advance for any help/advice, many thanks      .....    ALAN

Hi Alan, not too sure I can offer you any concrete advice, but I did deal with INPS many years ago. It really did depend on which office you were dealing with as to how long it took to get a reply. Most would never reply during summer, generally the further South the worse it was. So if you have been trying in August, that could be a problem. This is just a suggestion, but these many years ago I'm sure another office in Newcastle overseas group of the DWP used to send life certificates on behalf of EU pensioners living in the UK. It is of course a common practice and UK also do the same and likely use the same forms. They are what were common "E" forms used by all EU countries, we did not have to translate Italian forms as they were exactly the same as the UK forms, but in Italian i.e. same boxes. A long shot, but perhaps a quick and easy way in the long run. I'll have a look for you to see if I can find a number. At least these people will speak English (well Geordie...).

What I've said Alan may be a little more tricky if the lady has never had UK national insurance or basically a UK National Insurance Number NINO). However I do think it is worth giving these people a go to see if they can help you. This DWP LINK has the number of what I'm guessing is the old Overseas awarding of pensions, it's most likely it will not be them that can help you, but they should know the number of the section that deals with the "on going payment of pensions for people abroad within the EU" It may be they deal with anyone abroad and no longer separate EU and other countries. The important thing is to find out if they verify/issue life certificates for none UK EU nationals living in the UK. In your case they may baulk at it if she does not have a UK NINO as then they don't have the records immediately available to them to look at. Any death is verified already on these records, so it is easy for them to say yea or no. Don't be put off, if they are resonsible for doing this, and I'm thinking they are, then I would guess your mother in laws GP can if need be contacted by this office. You do need to respond to these letters one way or another as I'm sure they will stop her pension if they do not get a reply.. Another approach may be the Italian consulate in the UK (I am assuming you are in the UK?).

hi steve, many many thanks for the replies, i think you may have misread what i was saying ( probably the way i typed it sorry ) but it is NOT a proof of life letter that we are having a problem with ( we have those come to us in english and they are quite easy to reply to ) ,having done a bit more research i now have found that the current letter we are having problems with because its all in italian relates to her income for the year  2013( i think anyway).... we cannot work out if they are asking what she has earned or telling us what she has received for that year..or if we have to fill in the form in the letter  to say that there is no change in income for that year..its totally bemusing us.....the only thing i managed to work out ( through GOOGLE TRANSLATOR) is if they get no reply to the letter by FEBRUARY 2015 then they will stop her pension payments and thats the problem we have no idea what to put into the form as no-one here can read the italian language, thats why i was hoping someone would recognise the ... RED/EST-ita COD. C1520...at the top of the letter and tell us exactly what the letter & forms were and what we are supposed to do with them .....many thanks again.......ALAN
ps. yes we are in uk....and we have tried to contact the italian consulate in birmingham...but they never answer the phone but we keep trying

No problem Alan, it is likely me miss-reading your initial post. However I do know INPS is in fact the Italian equivalent to our DWP and is the very same body we dealt with many, many years back. That being the case it still may be worth a call to the office I give the link for as they may also deal with declarations of earnings. Although I must admit I do not recall anything of the nature, but it was many years ago. Another line would be to post a link to a copy of the form here as I'm sure there are a number of people here very qualified in reading Italian (I'm certainly not). Trouble with that as I see it is that many a UK form does not give much clue as to why it has to be completed.

Hi again Steve...thanks for the info and I will follow it up if needs be but I have eventually managed to track down the exact form in English online WAYHAY ! and it is to do with english and italian pension earnings for the year 2013...and to send certain documents and info to the INPS..I still do not fully understand certain aspects but think I have the gist of it..so I will fill in the form and send the documents needed along with a doctors official stamp on the form...I shall also send a letter asking in future if all communications could be made in ENGLISH as no-one this end understands italian....once again thank you so much for your advice and suggestions. ..cheers Alan

Just glad to hear you have a solution Alan

Alen,

I am looking for the same form you found. Where did you find it? Can you either post a link to it or actually post the PDF here or email it to me? mario.milanese
at
y*a*h*o*o
dot
com

Thanks,
Mario

Hi Mario...I will find the link later today and will let you have it as soon as I can...cheers ALAN

hi again Mario, i have emailed the form to you, i could not find the link that i used last time but i did download the form to my computer so it was not a problem to send you, could you please let me know that you have received it, i hope it helps you out, it did not sort all my queries out but it went a great way to explaining the letter we had received, cheers....ALAN