Buying a house from my mother who has alzheimers

tawse57

I know about this from personal experience and also from neighbours of mine who have gone through an almost identical experience as the OP. I will talk about these later on in the post.

This might become a long post.

Firstly, when I spoke to a solicitor about this about 6 years back the advice I got was the law is constantly being changed and it is a nightmare keeping ahead of the 'game' so to speak - hence why it is important for the OP to find a really good solicitor who specialises in this.

You definitely need to talk to a lawyer and talk to one ASAP. I am not up to date on the legal stuff so the above may or may not be relevant any longer. Do not take it as legal advice but as pointers for you to think about.

The Court of Protection will, rightly so, put the well-being of your Mum first and foremost. There have been too many instances of 'loving' children who have dumped an ill parent out onto the streets once they gain control of the house/finances so you might have to desensitise yourself to people who look WILL at you as greedy children wanting your Mum's house.

The problem you have is that your Mum now has a form of dementia and hence, legally, anyone can challenge in court whether she is able to make her own decisions in selling the house to you, making a will, etc. This can be a HUGE problem if Social Services, for example, want to come after you or your Mum for any present or future care fees. Apparently every Social Services dept in the country acts in a different way and a local solicitor will know more about this than anyone here can say.

But you can get around the above IF you get your Mum's GP/Doctors on board - you will have to apply to the Court of Protection for an enduring Power of Attorney (EPA) and the sooner you do it the better.

The obvious problem of your Mum's dementia can be complicated by another family member challenging the EPA and/or even Social Services challenging it. You need to gauge very, very carefully anything you say to any Social Worker or Carer who may or may not be involved with your Mum's care. On one hand, they could be very helpful and help assist you to get EPA for your Mum but, on the other hand, they may decide to challenge it - shocking I know, but it happens.

(You have to be very careful of any siblings, cousins, nephews, nieces, even neighbours, who might see your Mum's illness and the dilemma you now find yourself in as being an opportunity to extort either the house or a fat 'go away' fee from you.

You have no idea what financial problems others, even those close to you, are in and when this sort of thing arises you will be shocked who comes out of the woodwork and make all sorts of claims such as "Mrs. Jones promised me the house/half the house/50 grand."

In other words, you need to wise up to who you can talk to about this - whom you can trust. Be careful. Any solicitor will be able to tell you nightmare stories of loving relatives who turned out to be evil so and sos.)

Back to your Mum's GP/Doctors - you need them onboard to help you to get the EPA which basically means getting them to agree to testify, usually via an affidavit, that you are a good, loving and caring child of your Mum and that you have your Mum's best interests at heart.

Your Mum will most likely be interviewed, as to her wishes for you to be responsible for her via the EPA, or any affidavit from her to the Court of Protection would need to be witnessed - preferably via your solicitor or family GP. If your Mum is interviewed by the CofP then it would be great if your GP could be present. So, hopefully, you will see how important it is for your Mum's GP to be on board with your plans - in other words, you need to see a good solicitor ASAP and you also need to go and have a chat with your Mum's GP and/or her Mental Health Doctors/Nurses.

If your Mum has any sisters/brothers, neighbours, etc, who are also prepared to sign an affidavit that you are a good loving child then you need to seek them out. But, BE VERY CAREFUL here also, as you could merely be informing someone of what is going on who then turns out to have dubious motives - i.e. a distant relative who pops up and says that your Mum promised to leave her/him/them half the house or even a neighbour who claims the same. As any solicitor will tell you, where there is a Will there is a relative and this is equally as true when it comes to the situation you now find yourself in.

So, you have some things to think about regarding obtaining the EPA. You need to find a good solicitor who is up to date on this and see him/her ASAP. You also need to get your Mum's doctors on board but be very careful about who else you talk to about this.

OK, so let's assume that you get the EPA what are then your options?

1. Your Mum sells the house to you at a discount?

Hmm, the CofP will not like this as it would technically be seen as defrauding both your Mother and potentially the Social Services - whilst you are then responsible, by law, to act in her best interests. In theory, you would not have been working in the best interests of your Mother and you would have trouble finding a solicitor who would put through the sale anyhow. You would also have potential stamp duty issues with the tax man. A can of worms in many ways.

2. Your Mum sells you the house for full market value?

Hmm, not good either. First of all, can you afford it? Secondly, your Mum then has a huge wad of cash in the bank which can then be used for her care if and when she needs it - which is great for her care but poor for you if your Mum wants you to have an inheritance.

She could not 'gift' the money to you as there would be tax implications in doing so and, as you would then be repsonsible via the EPA for her finances, it would just not sit good with the CofP for you supposedly acting in your Mum's best interests.

Even if you could do this with no objections from the CofP, and your Mum handed over the cash to you via CofP documents that you sign, the problem you will then have is that you cannot simply gift money to a relative here in the UK, over the sum of 3K I think, without the taxman wanting a slice. I believe - but could be wrong - that anyone giving a lump-sum of money over 3K has to live for 7 or 9 years afterwards for the receiver not to have to pay tax on that sum. In the first year I think you can lose 40% of the sum in tax and the percentage then gradually decreases year by year until the 7th or 9th year.

In other words, your Mum could technically gift the money to you today and then pass away tomorrow and the taxman crops up and wants 40% of the sum your Mum gifted you over 3K.

3. You place your Mum's house in a trust.

Apparently this is very common - a trust is established for the house with both yourself and your Mum as trustees. The wording of the trust is made up so that both parties can remain in the house until they die with the house going to the surviving trustee. A third party is usually also appointed as a trustee, and this can be a solicitors or even a close family friend, who will then act to see the terms of the trust are adhered to.

The benefit of this is that you get to stay in the house and it is much harder for the Social Services to kick you out. Also, if you Mum goes into care then potentially Social Services can place a charge on the house for her fees but they cannot charge you for them until the house is sold. In theory, you could live there for the next 50 years and they would not be able to get their hands on the money. In practice, they would apply for a court order to make you sell the house... so only the solicitors would win via their fees.

But the main benefit is that they do not get their hands on all of the house in one go and you get potentially to save your inheritance.

4. Your Mum passes on and leaves the house to you in her Will.

Sorry to be blunt but you need to start dealing with this. Your Mum may live for another 20 or 30 years or she may well suddenly go downhill rapidly. With all the love in the World you cannot stop this happening.

As cruel as it sounds, and I know it is the last thing you will wish to hear, but there will come a time when it is better for your Mum, for you and your family that she passes on quickly rather than slowly. Even typing this hurts as it brings back painful memories of my own Mum and the time I was her sole carer.

I mention this aspect because you need to sit down as a person, as a child and as a family and weigh up the financial, emotional and stress implications of looking after your Mum as her health detriorates - it can take an enormous toll on people and it can, believe me, destroy your own health. Doctors will often tell stories of them wondering whether the carer will go first or the person being cared for. I learnt that lesson the hard way so please, please, please, think long and hard about this.

If you decide to care for your Mum as she detriorates you may almost kill yourself in doing it depending on how long the care goes on for.

On the other hand, it may not - sorry to blunt - go on that long and if that is the case then, presuambly, you will inherit the house via your Mum's Will. The plus side, if it can be called a plus side, is that you save on nursing costs and you will inherit your family home.

On the other hand, long-term caring can destroy and kill a person, destroy their health, force rows between family members, divorce and a whole host of nasty things.

So to summarise:

1. You need to go and find a really good solicitor experienced in this field. Do not just go and see any solicitor - find one who is up to date with what goes on in your area re social services and who is sympathetic.

When I needed such a solicitor the law firm appointed me a wet behind the years 20-something originally who I listened to tell me about what he could do for me. I was unimpressed. When he had finished telling me what he could do for me I told him that whilst I respected his qualifications I actually needed an "experienced rottweiller" - so they wheeled one in and I never looked back.

2. You need to talk to your Mum's GP and/or her mental health doctors and nurses. Family GP is best though.

3. You need to be very careful what you say to Social Services and, in the same respect, to the mental health team above who are looking after your Mum. Only you can gauge how much to trust them on a one to one level but be aware they work very much in tandem in some cases and what you say to one will be passed on to the other.

4. You need to seek out third parties who will help with affidavits as to the relationship between your Mum and yourself - friends, neighbours, etc. The sort of people who can say "Miss Jones has looked after her Mum for 23 years, is a living child and her Mum reguarly tells me what a loving daughter she is, how she wants her daugher to be responsible for her in old age, etc, etc." But, again, you have to very careful about who you can trust here re my comments earlier on.

Friends of mine, in their 70s, began going through what you are going through several years ago.

They have lived in the wife's Mum's house all their adult lives. They have paid her rent monthly but have no record off it after initially keeping a rent book for only the first year or so. They even split the house into two separate flats with separate meters for gas, electric, water, separate council tax, etc.

The Mother was healthy into her 80s - she just appeared not to want to die - but when she was 87 she had a problem with a heart valve and developed dementia as a result. The daughter tried to nurse her home but the Mum became increasingly beligerent and had to go into a nursing home. She is still alive.

The problem that this family had is that whilst the Mum had made a will leaving the house to her daughter she simply never expected to live this long.

The result is that the daughter could not afford the nursing home fees and could no longer nurse her Mum - it was killing her. The Social Services wanted the house to pay for the nursing fees and my friend had to go to court in order to stop being chucked out of her own home in her early 70s.

A great deal of stress.

Basically, what has happened is that a charge has been put on the house. The daugher and her husband can live in the house until the Mum dies when the house will be sold and part of the proceeds will go to the nursing fees.

I know my friend went back to court to try and be allowed to stay in the house until they themselves die - they are both in their mid-70s now - but I never heard what happened in this regard.

A big can of worms.

I am sorry to have ranted on for a long time - I hope this is of some help to you. I know how painful and worrying this can be.

It can be very very stressful looking after and nursing someone but if you can do it then you probably will get to keep the house when your Mum dies. You need to get the EPA in place and also check that your Mum's will is in order. The problem is that you have no idea how long your Mum will live - it could be a few years, it could be decades. You need to think long and hard not just about the financial aspect but also about the emotional, physical and stress aspects also.

Many people simply opt to give up their job to become a full-time carer - some do it for loving reasons, some do it because they are in a similar situation as yourself, some do it for both reasons. It is all a question of how long your Mum needs to be cared for.

You need to do something that many of us are bad at - realising that someone we love very much is becoming ill and nearing death. You have to juggle all of this whilst being practical and thinking not just about what is best for your Mum but also what is best for you. It can be very painful dealing with this and only people who have gone through it truly know how difficult it is.

You need to have some blunt conversations with your Mum's doctors and nurses on how they see her prognosis. Usually, they will tell you something flippant such as "She could die tomorrow or she could live to be a 100" which is usually their way of avoiding putting you through hurt. But often, if you sit down and have the conversation that no child wishes to have about an aging parent you might just get a genuine prognosis from them. Of course, no one is ever correct on this but health care specialists generally have a 'feeling' for the people in their care.

The hospice pioneer Elisabeth Kubler Ross wrote that guilt is the worst companion of grief. She wrote many fine books which help people think about and try to deal with the impending death of a loved one so perhaps you might look up her work online.

I wish you all the best.

puddy

just one thing, the mum doesnt live in the same house as the op, is that right?

secondly, im not sure that the op is concerned about losing any financial inheritance as such (such as if mum needs to pay for her own care out of any monies from the sale of the house ), im of the opinion that this is what money is for, to fund for care etc,,,, however, the op seems most concened about losing the roof over her head, quite rightly, not about whether she is getting any cash inheritence

bryanb

You haven't answered, where does your mum live et the moment?

RAS

Hi

Lengthy post by tawse that gives you a lot of information about the old laws and is not relevant unless you had an EPA in place by October 2007. The new laws are much more complex.

Start by reading this http://www.publicguardian.gov.uk/decisions/asking.htm

Jowo_2

ss3n08 wrote: »

My concern is that although I have been paying rent for 23 years, there was no contract as it was jsut between mother and daughter, would I still have any standing?

The Shelter website has a tenancy checker and this will give an idea of your rights as certain tenancies, particularly ones dating back more than a couple of decades, have stronger security of tenure.

But this is also something that a good solicitor with knowledge of regulated tenancies/housing law should be able to answer.

tawse57

RAS wrote: »

Hi

Lengthy post by tawse that gives you a lot of information about the old laws and is not relevant unless you had an EPA in place by October 2007. The new laws are much more complex.

Start by reading this http://www.publicguardian.gov.uk/decisions/asking.htm

I did say that my info was about 6 years old and that this stuff is constantly changing.

The info with the people I know is only a few yeas old though. As always, a good solicitor is needed but I think and hope that I have given some good pointers to the OP.

The emotional side never changes and it is something that has to be faced up to.

I wish the OP all the best.