Parents may need to pay money back to grandfathers estate! HELP!

getitsorted_3

Hi
I am not sure if I am posting in the right place, so please forgive me if not!

Last year my grandfather gave his 5 children £10,000 each, as a gift. Hi total estate is no more than £80,000 and my grandmother is dead. He sold his house years before and now rents, this money was what was made from his house. One of them needed it for his house so he decided to give the rest of them some to make it fair.
Shortly after he was diagnosed with Dementia and had deteriorated rapidly since. Now he has gone into residential care. Social Services have looked into his estate and seen that this money went out of his account in September 2007 and are now asking about it and say it will have to go ito consideration with his estate and they all may have to pay it back. Some have spent all of it and some still have it.

How will this work?

Have yu any suggestions as to what their rights are etc?

Thanks

sdooley

Social services can refuse to fund care if there has been 'voluntary deprivation of assets'. This can lead to a stand-off with relatives if they refuse to return money gifted. A lot will depend on whether the gift was made with the intention of avoiding paying for care home fees - if the gift was just before he went into care it may be that you have to prove there was no intention to avoid them rather than the other way round.

getitsorted_3

Thankyou!

The gifts were made just over a year ago and he has just gone into care last month. The gifts were not made for deliberate deprivation as we didn't know he would soon be going into care and it was the intention of my father to have him live with him. All the other brothers and sisters have demanded he lives in a home so it is now out of my fathers hands.

I don't know how they would prove it was not deliberate deprivation though.

Thanks for your help.

dunstonh

I don't know how they would prove it was not deliberate deprivation though.

Thats the hard bit. Despite the honest intentions, it smells of deprivation of assets and thats the problem. You say the gifts were in September. When was the diagnosis and when were the first tests/investigations?

That may help if there is a big enough gap between them but seeing as the means test can typically look back 2 years, then it may not be enough.