'Should you be forced to sell your home to pay for long term care?' poll

penarthian

I have daughters with families and good jobs who will struggle this year to make ends meet and probably will not get away on holiday in 2012. I have a niece, married, with four children who has never done a days work in her life and is supported by the state. She tells me her friend had a job once but did not like it so they will not bother!!! She drives a large, seven seater car and had a holiday aboard last year. This difference will go on throughout their lives, my girls supporting themselves and my niece relying on the state. I have always encouraged my family to save for the future but I am finding it increasingly difficult to see why. Live for the present and the state will provide for the future seems to be the mantra of so many these days!
I believe that having an insurance that will provide for old age care should be made compulsory. It could be bought outright by those who can or paid throughout their lives from wages or benefits. Maybe by doing this it will be possible to see a pot of money building up to be spent with a purpose later on. If care is needed in later life then the money can be spent on that and if you are able to look after yourself some of the money can be paid back to you to boost your State Pension.
I am sure many will find flaws in this suggestion but what I am looking for is a fairer system that rewards and encourages every member of our society for taking responsibility for the whole of their life.

kikamorris

I do 'financial care' work with a number of elderly people - mainly women whose husbands have always taken care of the family finances and who then have to learn how to run a household budget, pay a gas bill etc after their husbands have died.
OK, only a small and perhaps unrepresentative sample, but those people seem to think that they have 'saved for their old age' and have no objection to paying for the cost of their care out of their assets as it's what they were saving for in the first place.
Sadly, it's their greedy children who whinge about 'spending our inheritance' and complain if mum's house has to be sold to pay for her care home costs. Note that those greedy children seem to treat it as their own money, not their mum's, even before she's dead!

madame_butterfly_2

AS far as I am aware:(Just to clarify the rules at the moment) :

People are only expected to fund the residential part of their care. If nursing care is needed then the NHS picks up the bill for the nursing side of it .Residential care:-any charges are means tested and residential care is provided through local authority budgets but they cannot touch your assets if they fall below a certain amount, not certain about current rates but three years ago this was 23,500 so if your assets are less than this you will not pay the rest of the charges for those who have assets worth more than this are charged at a pro rata rate depending on your savings etc. (If your money is in a joint account they can only look at your share ie: 50%)

The average cost of residential care in the uk is somewhere in the region of £500 per week and the system works the same as if you were in hospital for long periods of time - your benefits will be redirected to pay for your care if you are in permanent care which allows for the money to be used for the needy to be supported.

jlc57

I agree with Chattie and believe that any assets and savings we manage to keep through our life is so that we can end our days in a style that we want, if you want to choose a decent home and that means that I have to use the assets that I have built up over my life - so be it. I will help my children along their way in life but I do no expect to have to put up with a low rent care home because my children feel they have a right to my assets when I die. My view for many years is that my mum and dad should have sold their house, rent a low maintenance apartment and spend their cash on holidays but of course they won't do this because they feel they have to leave something to their children - who are all well set up in life already!

alduncan

The big problem with the system at the moment is the unfairness of it- as I have experienced with my mother-in-law who has early-onset Alzheimer's:

If you are under 'Social Services' then you pay EVERYTHING. If you are under NHS health care you pay NOTHING. Yet the line between social services and health services is not clear cut at all when it comes to diseases like dementia.

It means that the taxpayer currently pay for patients undergoing cancer care etc but it won't pay for dementia care (at least not until late stages). Is that fair? The government needs to sort this one out.

Doc_N

The welfare state was set up - quite rightly - in the late 1940s to help people with a genuine need. The Labour government that was then in power then gave us the NHS, pensions, and indeed created the welfare state as we now know it.

However............it was intended as a safety net for those who need it. Not as an entitlement for those who don't.

I speak as someone with a relative who had to spend most of the value of her house on care home fees - a huge sum of money running into around £25,000 for each year that she was in the care home.

Was that right? Yes, I think it was - she had assets in the shape of the house, so why should the taxpayer (all of us, in reality) have been expected to pick up the bill?

Most of the complaints about this system are coming not from the elderly person (many of them are past caring) but from the children who feel they've been cheated out of their 'rightful' inheritance.

Is it really right to make taxpayers pay the cost (through higher taxes) of allowing those children to pick up their inheritance, even though it should have been used to pay for their day-to-day living costs in a care home?

pippinpuss

So what happens if one of a couple goes into a home, should the remaining person suffer by moving out by selling their home?

I don't want to go into a home paying full cost & find that someone who has never worked getting the same Either everyone pays or no-

brizey47

I can come to this from 2 different directions but they both bring me to the same conclusion.

My mother died a little over 3 years ago she was 87, didn't have a house and didn't have a lot of money but she suffered dreadfully with arthritis during her final 2-3 years during which time she had replacement hips on the NHS. As I said she wasn't wealthy she'd worked until 65 in a canteen and had saved for her retirement but when she died we found that those savings while not being a large amount would have beeen enough to fund her hip replacements much earlier than waiting for the NHS and given her a far greater quality of life in her final years. What there was got shared out as per her will but I and my brothers would far rather she had spent that money on herself at what was a dificult time for her.

I work with someone who had an elderly wealthy Aunt and Uncle with no children, the Aunt died a few years ago and the Uncle had to be put into a care home at which time he and his sister were given power of attorney over his affairs, they were most indignant that they had to spend his money and the proceeds from renting out his house on care for him, he has since died but from what I heard on occasion it sounded a very mercenary situation where they were looking for the cheapest rather than the most comfortable care home. Should the state have paid for his care so that these greedy people could spend all the money.

As someone else said no-one is owed an inheritance if you get one be grateful, I know if my children ever say that I'm spending their inheritance I will make sure I do just that, every last penny. Igot into conversation with someone of a similar age a few months ago I think he had the right attitude when he said I want to run out of money and breath at the same time.

dogflyinghigh

hi, sorry, but i think this is the same old thing, if you work hard for your money, take care of it and are careful, hence having a home when you are old, then you are made to pay and sell your home, but if you have not paid into the system, but claimed, not saved, spent all you get then, yet again you benefit, and get it paid for yet again, i do think the system is all wrong, sorry if this upsets anyone, but it does make me angry

ellieellieellie

I think splitting it down to only two options was the wrong way to go about structuring the poll. You say you want to remove shades of grey, but the reality is that an issue like this has those shades of grey. They are unavoidable.

Although I voted for people to be required to use their own assets, including property they own, in reality I feel that this should apply only to residential care, not nursing care - though I also think the way care needs are assessed wants looking at. Nursing care is something that, as a UK citizen, I feel I am entitled to, residential care is not.