Rights to property void if in care trust?

I don't fully understand 'care trust' ; hopefully someone more knowledgable can comment.

Taking a simplistic view I will assume care trust related to your grandmother's lifetime and ceased on her death.

Some questions and info to get you started in understanding the situation.

Who was executor of grandmother's will?
Was the property transferred into the two children's names at the time?
Do they own it as joint tenants or tenants in common.?
If you don't know the answer to the last two questions, check out the Land Registry website, where for a small fee ( £4? ) these matters can be checked by obtaining the deeds.

If mum and brother owned the house as joint tenants then they each owned the house completely and it automatically passes to the survivor on the death of the other.

If they owned it as tenants in common the they each own 50%. They can bequeath this 50% share to whoever they wish via their will. If no will, the 50% share will be passed on according to the intestacy rules.

Hope this gives you some things to check out.

Jay87d wrote: »

My grandmothers property was lived in by my mother, the property was in a "care trust" that prevented the property from being sold to pay for care. After my grandmother passed away we found a will that states the property should be shared amongst my grandmothers two children. My mother has now passed away, would her share of the property be shared between her children or would her brother be entitled to the full property? Could the trust policy affect the will?

Do you have more details about this "care trust". As far as I know there is no legal way of doing this because it counts a deprivation of assets. If your mother died after your grandmother then she would have inherited under the will. Was the will probated?

Jay87d wrote: »

My mother has now passed away, would her share of the property be shared between her children or would her brother be entitled to the full property?

The simple answer to this part of the question is 'it depends on the wording of the will'. My mother's will specifically excludes her grandchildren should any of her children pre-decease her, but that it not, as I understand it, the default position.

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

The simple answer to this part of the question is 'it depends on the wording of the will'. My mother's will specifically excludes her grandchildren should any of her children pre-decease her, but that it not, as I understand it, the default position.

OP, as noted it is difficult to say what a care trust is. I can only assume that what she did was transfer the property to some form of discretionary trust. Whoever manages the trust holds the property in accordance with the provisions of the trust document. It will probably include a clause stipulating under what conditions it can be dissolved and what happens to the assets in the trust at that time. You can only establish this from the organisation managing the trust.

If the trust document states that on your mother's death the assets pass to a beneficiary that will happen, nothing to do with the Will, subject of course to any investigation that the local authority etc might embark upon if it regards this as deprivation of assets (this would apply if the Council has been paying the care fees, if she was self financing it would not apply).

The provisions of her Will apply to the assets left. If your GM did not own the house bequeathing it in her Will has no effect. Obviously if the trust is instructed to give the assets to the estate it will.

I will, again, point out why all these sorts of schemes can be extremely bad news.

My relative, let us call her A, was disgusted that my mother sold another relative, B's house using a PoA to fund B's care. B had severe vascular dementia, and was cared for extremely well with the sort of attention you can pay for with the proceeds of a house sale, rather than ending up in bare minimum cost council care. That my mother was the notional sole beneficiary, so the only person that was "losing out" was my mother anyway was beside the point, it was the principle of the thing (etc).

So A thought that she would be clever, and drew up a power of attorney for her sons which explicitly excluded selling her house to pay for her care. And, for extra fun, it also explicitly excluded them from renting it out, either. It's not clear whether this was to spite the council, "protect my sons' inheritance" or something more atavistic. But we'll never know, because she succumbed, about ten years ago, to Alzheimers At which point the PoA passed into the hands of her sons, who were horrified by the terms of it (she hadn't told them).

And here we are today. Her sons, who aren't very well off, are stuck with a rotting house that they can't afford to insure or maintain, and has reached the stage that the neighbours are talking about legal action to force repairs for a dangerous roof. She is in bare-bones accommodation, but the only income that can go to the costs is her small widow's pension, which of course doesn't come close to covering even the meanest provision. The council are funding the difference, but are getting quite aggressive about the large asset that is sat there, but at the moment cannot be sold or rented out. They want the sons to get a fresh PoA from the court of protection on the grounds that the existing one is manifestly unreasonable. When she finally dies, the house will have to be sold at auction for a massive undervalue, as it is not, after sitting empty and unheated for ten years, currently fit for human habitation. There is no realistic prospect that the sale will yield sufficient to pay the council the money they are owed, so the estate will be effectively insolvent. The sons don't have the money or, to be frank, the interest in going to the CoP and getting the PoA overturned, and I believe (we aren't close, so this is second hand) may have decided to walk away from the whole problem, house, mother, everything and leave the council to sort out the mess.

So her "clever" scheme has resulted in a situation where her house is close to valueless, her sons will inherit absolutely nothing apart from hassle and she's living in the cheapest imaginable care, while everyone is massively impacted by her stupid posturing. She might has well have sold her house, built a pyre in the street out of ten pound notes and burnt the whole lot.

There may have been a clever solution which would have fixed this, but if there was, no-one proposed it. The sons are saints in my book: if I've been presented with that by my parents I would have refused to accept the PoA and left them to it.