mum and dad in 70's

monkeyspanner

Your sister is advocating a very crude approach to avoiding paying for care. There are a number of issues you could consider.

- First of all the approach to care is now to keep people in their own home and independant for as long as possible. This is usually done by providing support for a carer or by arranging care at home. There is no standard financial support for this although it is means tested and depends on the local council support. The value of the home is disregarded from these assessments.

- If one of your parents does need to be moved to a care home and the other remains in the family home, then the value of the home would be disregarded from the financial assessment. If the individual has assets (other than the property) in excess of about £22000 then the council would not support the care home fees. If you would like to know more about the assessment system have a look at this fact sheet http://www.counselandcare.org.uk/assets/library/documents/16_Care_home_fees_paying_them_in_England_2009.pdf

- The issue of the property value being assessed would become an issue if both your parents needed a care home placement or if the surviving parent needed a care home. In this circumstance IMHO it is better for your parent/s to have the value of the property to give them some choice of care home as the councils often do not fund care to a sufficient level. There are ways of passing a proportion of the property value on first death to avoid that proportion being assessed but it is important that this is organised properly to protect the interests of the remaining parent.

pinkykat

Thanks for all your advice and yes mum and dad are fit and healthy and I hope they stay that way and enjoy there lives to the full. As far as I am concerned is they earned there money so if they want to spend every single penny then good on them.
I will be speaking soon to my sister before they come back from another great hols. to tell her to keep her nose out. And I am sure my dad would do the same.

Mojisola

pinkykat wrote: »

Mum and dad have gone on hols. my sister had a coffee with me just two days after they had gone.
This is what she said: a friend of hers auntie has the dreaded altzimers and she owns her own home and has savings. they want to put her into a home because she has got bad which on its own is dreadful. They have been told that to do this she would have to sell her home and put her savings into this care. The thing is that she has made a will leaving her property and savings to her son for when she dies. So he doesnt lose this he has asked her to sign everthing over to him so that the state care for her. When looking into this the property and savings have to be signed over for at least 7 years.

This is often misunderstood. The seven year rule applies to Inheritance Tax and this would only come into play if the house and savings are over £325,000. Social Services can look back any number of years and, as the mother already has a diagnosis of Alzheimers, would probably not accept the transfer of assets. It sounds as if the greedy son is causing his mother problems for no gain.

twizzel

On a different tack....I'm no expert but I thought that if someone had to go into care on the basis of ill health rather than for social care, then the NHS have to pay for that care. Isn't it called "Continuing NHS healthcare".

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

lilac_lady

Isn't it amazing how many people feel entitled to grab their parents hard earned money? I inherited nothing and never thought less of my mother for it. She needed all her income to survive and never even had a bank account.

margaretclare

lilac_lady wrote: »

Isn't it amazing how many people feel entitled to grab their parents hard earned money? I inherited nothing and never thought less of my mother for it. She needed all her income to survive and never even had a bank account.

This is how DH and I feel. Neither of us inherited a thing. There was nothing to inherit! The background I came from, people who died left not much more than enough to pay for their funeral and their burial in the village churchyard, not enough to pay for a headstone. DH's father was a skilled craftsman but he always lived in rented houses - rented from landlords - and left £1K to each of his 4 grandchildren, nothing to his sons.

This is something that has only been talked about in recent years. Maybe since the 'monetarism' of the 1980s, maybe only since the crazy rise in house prices in the last decade. You just did not hear one generation talking openly about their 'inheritance' from another generation, at least not among ordinary working people.

Errata

It's only in the past few decades that many people have owned a house rather than renting, and of course it's only relatively recently that a house became worth a large sum of money compared to say 40 years ago.
As far as expectations of an inheritance go, Jarndyce v Jarndyce demonstrates the phenomena was as familiar in Victorian times as it is today.

tubsmacker

Well Pinkykat, I see some good advice and a heap of bad advice posted so far.

As your mum and dad are in good health you are in a good position to talk to them about the issues of possible future healthcare and how things might pan out. If it were me, I would ask them to consider how they would want you to handle things come that time. Maybe they already have plans for funding private care. If their assets are significant, they may object to the idea of Social Services stripping their lifes work away from them regardless of their thought on your inheritance. Most people who have worked hard and saved object to paying for healthcare when it is provided free to such people as FAILED asylum seekers.

At this stage,I would suggest that you get your parents to consult a law firm that has a private client department that employs an asset protection specialist. He or she may advise on the use of asset protection techniques such as a proprietary estoppel to make life very hard for the man from the social services at some stage in the future.