elederly care

gbrael

Our quandary is as follows…
We have taken my wifes mother in to live with us (we have power of attorney) and have rented here house out. We currently receive £ 420 for this after estate agency fees. We receive about £230 attendance allowance and she receives a very small pension. Since we have taken her in, I have had to give up my weekend job a loss of £560 per month and my wife no longer works in the week as we share the caring. So we are roughly £1500 down per month.
We are considering selling her house but we must claw some of the money back from her for us caring for her, Her house is only really worth £88,000. And we understand the gvernment wil take as much of her monay as possble in the event of here going into a home..?
In order for us to be able to continue to look after we need to replace some of our financial loss from her money - we understand that we can be gifted £3000 a year but that still leaves us short....
1) Would we be able to charge here "Rent" for staying in our house and perhaps a "cost of keep" ??
2) We understand that we will have to change the way we pay our carer to "direct pay" and that is a necessary deduction from her estate
Are there any ways we can use her money to help us to help her ???
Any advice/guidance appreciated .
We have rented the house out for one year but we feel that the limited protection given to land lands coupled with inept letting agents leaves us reluctant to do this again and we are struggling on the rental income - if she were to home we obviously lose everything bar £16,000 id that’s the threshold the state allows.
So please if anyone can give us some idea really would be helpful….
May thanks

BigAunty

Raise your query with Help the Aged (it's called something else now, I think) as they will be aware of deprivation of capital as it exists with regards to elder care.

if you mean charge her rent to qualify for housing benefit, then probably not, as HB is not payable when a tenant lives in the same property as their landlord to whom they pay rent when closely related, so no public funds there is she becomes your lodger. If she becomes a joint tenant, therefore has a liability to pay rent to your landlord, then her capital in her property will cause problems, I think.

If you mean charge her rent to reduce her payable care fees, I don't know -sounds like a query for Help the Aged.

Go to the Turn2us online benefit calculator to see if there are any benefits you are missing out on.

Mojisola

Before you make any decisions about selling the house, make sure you are all claiming any benefits you are all entitled to - AA, pensions, pension credits, etc. AgeUK or the Pensions Service will help you claim and fill in the forms.

Is the AA and carer you mention for your MIL or because you and your wife have care needs?

If your MIL was living anywhere else, she would be paying rent and utility bills so I don't see why she shouldn't contribute to the bills.

Selling her house and giving yourselves money from her capital may well cause problems in the future because it could be seen as misuse of your powers of attorney and could be judged as deprivation of capital. Much better that bills should be split three ways and clear accounts kept. If you and/or your wife take any payment for her care, that will be income and will have to be declared.

gbrael

Hi thanks your replies - she has no HB and owns the house outright - what we are trying to do is recoup our cost for looking after her - she can gift us GBP 3000 and we could charge an amount of say GBP 400 rent etc - we are not trying to rob anyone just recoup some of the GBP 1500 we have lost having to give up work to care for her in our house.

Surely a formal or even informal agreement payment of rent from her would be ok ?