Residential care fees: who pays us or state/council?

This absolutely takes the biscuit! How disgusting! I can't believe anyone would be so insensitive at a time like that. Oh yeah - I forgot - it's about money! These sort of immoral leeches move into any area where they can make a lot of money without much bother. They charge a fortune for providing not just a roof over your head and food but also for 'medical care' which seems to consist of barely trained staff paid the minimum wage and access to a GP as we all have anyway. If they're not looking after old people they cram as many babies and toddlers into premises as they can get away with and give their parents sheets of paper showing what their children have achieved during their 10 hours a day of being 'looked after' by total strangers. I have totally gone off on one! Sorry!

For those that have relatives or themselves where care may be needed in the years to come, then there are also other things you can do such as putting the property in tenants in common and writing a discretionary will trust. These have been tested in court with three local authorities trying to force a property sale but all three failed.

Another is to utilise investment bonds for the investments. These come under life assurance rules and life assurance investments are not included in the means test for assessing local authority care (or pension credit).

However, both of these things must be done in advance and at no point must there be any comment or documentation to say that it has been done to get local authority care in the future. If it has been seen to be done to get benefits, then they can be clawed into the means test. Just as doing after the event is seen as doing it for that reason.

My mother recently suffered a tragic accident and despite my elderly father's best efforts she is now in a home, in our experience if you have nothing, fine the state pays, if you have assets then you pay,
If you don't pay straight away the debt will acrue untill such times as the funds become available.
My father being fairly smart, has moved, bought the new house in his name alone, placed a considerable sum in my mothers account which is paying for her care, when this is exhausted the state will take over.

He has subsequently sold the equity in his house to a company which enables him to live there untill death, the money made he is giving to his various grandchildren and spending on himself so he has a good standard of living.

Pretty sad that you have to take such steps later in life, c'est la vie.

shiredeon wrote:

Pretty sad that you have to take such steps later in life, c'est la vie.

While tragic accidents do happen and there will be exceptions to every rule, in general MOST people don't go into nursing care homes, most people spend their last years in their own homes but as natural aging impacts on their health, may need ultimately to go into hospital for a few weeks and if they don't die in hospital will be transferred to a nursing home where they will probably last less than six months.

The most common reason for nursing home admission results from falls. Falls are a result of loss of lower limb strength and this is almost always a result of low vitamin d status, particularly in the Winter.
Low serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D in older persons and the risk of nursing home admission
The way to keep your elderly relatives OUT of a nursing home is to ensure they get outside, into the sunshine, regularly, around midday, during the summer months and to check they are getting high strength (4000iu/d)Vitamin D3 cholecalciferol supplements during the Winter months. Unfortunately most GP's prescribe an inadequate amount of D2 Ergocalciferol and this is useless for the elderly see The case against ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) as a vitamin ...

I appreciate there is a public paranoia over nursing home fees and I accept that people need to know exactly what the NHS SHOULD be paying for but I think, for most people, the lengths your father have gone to are a misguided and misplaced overreaction.

Do you think initially it may be worth collecting all the threads where these issues have been discussed and having them as a "sticky"

Problem is they are spread over lots of different forums.