Putting home into family trust to avoid nursing home fees

Mojisola

punchyuk wrote: »

I'd like to think if my mother needed full time care later in life she would be in a place just like his.

We've talked this through with friends of the same age and have thought seriously about setting up an oldies commune when we're a few more years down the line. If half a dozen of us oldies pooled our resources it would provide a reasonable amount of money to buy a bigger property where we could all have our own rooms and a couple of shared sitting rooms and also employ staff of our choosing to do the chores and any caring.

It might not be enough if care needs get serious but it would see most of us through our later years.

Dunroamin

There are already quite a few co housing projects in the UK, many for older people. There's lots of information on here.

http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk/

margaretclare

get all what for nothing? Get no choice, get what the LA is prepared to pay for? Pardon me, but I'd rather lose 'it' all, if it means I retain some choice, some autonomy.

Money isn't everything, but even a small amount of it certainly helps in a number of situations. Take education, for example: if you're prepared to pay for transport, your children can benefit from a better education than if you're reliant on taking whatever the LA offers. Did the scroungers get that choice? generally not.

I agree with the latter. My thinking exactly. Money guarantees very little in this life, but it does give a modicum of choice. There have been occasions in the past few years when I've blessed the fact that I had some savings I could access when needed.

I don't like the way people are categorised as 'scroungers'. There are plenty of examples of these, but the ones who don't get any publicity are the ones who struggled in low-paid jobs for a lifetime, or saw their jobs disappear from under them when they thought they were in an industry that would be needed for ever. A large proportion of retired people on means-tested benefits, which categorises them as 'poor', are older women. These women were encouraged to think they had no need to make provision for their own retirement - it would all come through their husbands. Even if they worked, their incomes were classed as 'pin-money' even though it went into the family 'pot' and was used to pay for normal things within the family. Over many years I worked with many such women. During night shifts, the story was often 'Oh, I was training as a nurse but I got pregnant...' or 'My parents thought there was no need to educate a girl so I couldn't train for a proper qualification, no 'O' levels...'

Most of the homes I did agency shifts at in the mid-1990s were in the Southend/Rayleigh/Rochford area of Essex. Maybe it tells you something about those particular homes in that they were always running short of staff and had to ring the agency at short notice. One, I know, had a lot of residents from East London. The London boroughs found it cheaper to 'buy' home space in Essex rather than in costly London. These folk had grown up around buses, cinemas, traffic, and sat looking out on to open fields. Also, miles away from any surviving relatives.

This is one I wouldn't mind living in if push came to shove: http://www.ashingdonhall.com/

Val75

OK, can see this needs a lot of thinking about, now I am wondering if the chap who came to our 50+ club who works for a large law company, not a solicitors, gave the right information, not all the folk at the club that day were as savvy with money as I am. Some quite elderly ladies were having appointments made for them to advise!! then set up trusts, etc., to protect their property.

I do wonder now if a will and trust specialist as they call themselves are as safe as a solicitor. We were quite enthusiastic on the day, now having real second thoughts, and think we should probably go to a local solicitor. We have limited capital, and just wonder if it is all worth it. They did recommend Power of Attorney and I can see that is worthwhile.

The information given at the club was that Transfer of Equity, Trusts, and Tenants in Common protected property. It seems from above posts this is not true. Therefore this company gave out the wrong advice and I feel we need now to tell the people not to part with any money and get their children and family in on it before making any decisions. We certainly will.

What a minefiled this is. :mad:

margaretclare

It certainly is a minefield. There's an awful lot of ill-informed comment out there. A good starting-point would be the AgeUK fact-sheets which can be downloaded. Power of Attorney is certainly a very good idea. Making a will is an absolute necessity.

You say you've worked hard all your lives, have small pensions, own your own home. This is the case with us. DH and I would be a lot poorer if we weren't together, both with own pension provision and owning the roof over our heads. Even so, when one of us dies the other will still be above the threshold for any means-tested benefits because of state pension plus SERPS/S2P which, in our age-group, can be inherited 100% by the survivor, and by pensions from the jobs we did in a working lifetime which, combined, lasted nearly a century. Nevertheless, we are still not interested in the idea of 'protecting property'. We own this bungalow as joint tenants, and I insisted on this after we married and after my daughter's death. DH wasn't bothered - I wanted him to be sure of a roof over his head if I die first. I am not about to give it away to anyone else. We did work hard for it, and it can be used for our needs if required. I agree with 7DWE and Mojisola - if there is anything left to leave to the grandchildren then so be it. If not, it can't be helped. After all, no one ever left us anything. Not their fault - they had nothing to leave! Did that make them 'scroungers'? When I remember how hard they worked just to stay warm, clean, housed and fed, I don't think so.

Val75

There are many scroungers, that is so true, believe me, we know some.

However, you are right about those who struggle, my husband was made redundant at 53, without a very large redundancy package after being with the company over thirty years. We sold our decent house and bought a lower priced one at the seaside. I worked for three years in an estate agents, he tried before we came to the seaside for a job and nobody wanted to know him, that was twenty six years ago. We then did b and b which got us through to his old age pension, we still carried on for a while.
We never dreamed of doing b and b, but needs must!!
All this was above board and done in the correct way.

If he dies I get half his company pension and a widows pension, even though I worked all my life until 53, I paid married womans and get no pension from anything. At the moment my old age pension is from my husbands input.

I will not be paying any tax as my income will be very low, at the moment because he was born before 1935 we can earn up to twenty thousand tax free, not likely at all we would ever earn that, so we are not tax payers now. We get no benefits for anything, if our teeth fall out we have to save up for our dentist fees!!! At the moment we still have our own teeth and get our glasses from Glasses Direct!!! However, our income is low. Our car is 16. We need it living where we do, but most of the time use our bus passes.

Our savings are declining all the time!!

So we have been there and done that, and managed, as we still do. So, sorry Margaret, we still want to make sure our son, who worked for his company for 18 years and is now doing Kleeneze, after no redundancy pay, gets our house.

We all have different reasons and each one of us has to look at it in our own way.

Thank you all for your input, it is much appreciated. Val

margaretclare

I worked all my life until 53, I paid married womans and get no pension from anything. At the moment my old age pension is from my husbands input.

Ooops. The dreaded 'married woman's small stamp' again. One of the biggest con-tricks going. Thank goodness I didn't fall for it. Many of the older women now living in poverty, the ones who get 'no choice' as discussed earlier, are victims of this. I don't think they can be called 'scroungers', just over-naive and misled.

We also get married people's tax allowance because one of us was born before April 1935. We share this, set half of it against our individual pensions income.

Dunroamin

margaretclare wrote: »

Ooops. The dreaded 'married woman's small stamp' again. One of the biggest con-tricks going. Thank goodness I didn't fall for it. Many of the older women now living in poverty, the ones who get 'no choice' as discussed earlier, are victims of this. I don't think they can be called 'scroungers', just over-naive and misled.

Sorry MC, I don't agree with you on this.

As I've posted before, my mother paid the married woman's stamp and I can remember her telling it meant she wouldn't get a pension in her own right. She wasn't an educated woman or even well informed so, if she knew this fact, it must have been common knowledge. Like all the women who did this, she chose to have more money in her pocket and rely on my dad's pension.

punchyuk

Val75 wrote: »

There are many scroungers, that is so true, believe me, we know some.

However, you are right about those who struggle, my husband was made redundant at 53, without a very large redundancy package after being with the company over thirty years.

If he dies I get half his company pension and a widows pension, even though I worked all my life until 53, I paid married womans and get no pension from anything. At the moment my old age pension is from my husbands input.

I will not be paying any tax as my income will be very low, . We get no benefits for anything, if our teeth fall out we have to save up for our dentist fees!!! At the moment we still have our own teeth and get our glasses from Glasses Direct!!! However, our income is low. Our car is 16. We need it living where we do, but most of the time use our bus passes.

Our savings are declining all the time!!

So we have been there and done that, and managed, as we still do. So, sorry Margaret, we still want to make sure our son, who worked for his company for 18 years and is now doing Kleeneze, after no redundancy pay, gets our house.

I hear this a lot from my mums generation, when my grandfather died, fortunately his pension went to my nan, but I hear of many cases or people working all their lives and dying in their sixties with both themselves and their spouses not enjoying the fruits of their labour.

clemmatis

Dunroamin wrote: »

Sorry MC, I don't agree with you on this.

As I've posted before, my mother paid the married woman's stamp and I can remember her telling it meant she wouldn't get a pension in her own right. She wasn't an educated woman or even well informed so, if she knew this fact, it must have been common knowledge. Like all the women who did this, she chose to have more money in her pocket and rely on my dad's pension.

I'm sure it was pretty common knowledge. (My mother paid the full stamp and, as things turned out, that was for the best.)