Family Protection Trust

jojam

My parents are thinking of taking our a family protection trust, which will put their 'owned' home and savings into a trust this is then protected from the local authorities should they go into a home or require care. Has anyone else had experience of this or know if it successful? We live in Scotland.

StiGar

Visited a solicitor last week with my Father to discuss securing my parents assets. Was advised that setting up a Family Trust was the best option. Solicitor suggested that the local authority could appeal against this if they wanted to but as of yet they had not choosen to progress this through the courts. So at the moment they tend to walk away and not pursue. However one day they might choose to pursue via the courts and it would depend on this outcome as to how safe your money is. At the moment though it seems the best option for us.

We live in the UK.

Beej40

jojam wrote: »

My parents are thinking of taking our a family protection trust, which will put their 'owned' home and savings into a trust this is then protected from the local authorities should they go into a home or require care. Has anyone else had experience of this or know if it successful? We live in Scotland.

I'd like, if I may, to put another perspective on this thread - that of privately run care homes, many of which are run by non-profit making, charitable organisations. The key points are as follows:

1. The full local authority rates paid for care (nursing or residential) are insufficient on their own to provide for the standards of care that most of us would wish for our family. That is why 'self-funded' fee rates charged by Homes are invariably a lot higher than local authority rates.

This situation is only likely to get worse in the next decade or so as local authority funding comes under extraordinary pressure.

2. Under the National Care Home Contract in Scotland, the practice of topping-up a local authority's fee rates is no longer permitted (this is, however, still common in England & Wales).

3. Therefore a privately run Home in Scotland is faced with using the income from what self-funded clients that it can secure in order to subsidise the care of it's local authority funded clients.

4. So it may be that when the time comes for admission to long-term care (often these days in a crisis situation) that there may be a long wait for your preferred Home and self-funded clients may have to take priority if the Home already has its 'economic quota' of local authority clients and is failing to cover its costs.

However Homes run by the local authorities are different because they do not have to operate under standard economic principles.

5. So by all means take out a Family Protection Trust; but you may ultimately have to limit your choice of Home to those actually run by the local authorities. That way the local authority is truly paying for the cost of care and there are no other victims.

Phil_G_101

jojam wrote: »

My parents are thinking of taking our a family protection trust, which will put their 'owned' home and savings into a trust this is then protected from the local authorities should they go into a home or require care. Has anyone else had experience of this or know if it successful? We live in Scotland.

Visited a solicitor last week with my Father to discuss securing my parents assets. Was advised that setting up a Family Trust was the best option. Solicitor suggested that the local authority could appeal against this if they wanted to but as of yet they had not choosen to progress this through the courts. So at the moment they tend to walk away and not pursue. However one day they might choose to pursue via the courts and it would depend on this outcome as to how safe your money is. At the moment though it seems the best option for us.

We live in the UK.

Hi StiGar and JoJam,
I'm not a lawyer but I have been woking very closely with one on this exact topic- I'm a copywriter and web developer and my client is a lawyer. The last time we spoke I asked him if The Family Protection Trust was available in Scotland and he said that the trusts that he writes up do not stand up in Scotland.
In England Trust laws are different and he has many happy clients where one of a couple has gone into care and the second partner has kept the house/asset because they only own half of it- therefore the property has no value (you can't sell half a house!). Local Authorities have tried to take his clients to court to force the sale of a house but each case has been thrown out.
I won't give his name or links here but PM me if you'd like to connect