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

pinkclouds

I voted for protecting people's homes because there were only two bald options. In reality, I think *homes* should be protected but additional *houses* should be sold to fund the care. I don't really mind if your home is a tiny apartment or a large country house. It will be full of memories and weeping relatives soon enough. I *do* mind if you have a lot of wealth *excluding* your home and you think that you shouldn't have to spend any of your own money. No one needs a holiday house or a property portfolio - those are just "assets". Your actual "home" is completely different.

peterbanbury

I'm managing an aunt's money as she has dementia and lives in a home where she is well looked after. the state pays nursing costs (about £100 a week) but leaves about £1,000 a week. It's a good home (I have seen a few) of the standard we's all hope for should it happen to us. I reckon her money will last 'till she's 93 or 94. I doubt the state would pay enough to keep her in this home once her assets fall to the limit (about £23,500 at present I think).

It's a shame that the Tories scuppered the talks that were being held before the last election and used the "death tax" scare. Some scheme where a single payment at retirement or from your estate (even if it's to private sector insurers)(with safeguards about giving it all away etc) would make the remainder of her life more secure.

"Keeping the house" is much too simplistic - houses vary from massive to one bedroom flats like my aunts (we rent it but only get about £150 a week after expenses). We'd have to stop people buying expensive houses to avoid paying for care.

russjacks

Dear MEHER

Whist it could be hearbreaking for the person to realise that it wouldn't be easily passed on to the successors, it is sad that family values weren't instilled in them. Some price to pay but the tax payer shouldn't have to pay whilst saving assets for a dysfunctional family.

I find this statement very offensive, :mad:
I do not have a dysfunctional family. :mad:
My comments are my own thoughts on this matter and what I would like to happen to my assetts when I die, or if i have to go into a home. because i wish with all my heart to give something to my daughter when i die dos not make my family Disfunctional.

2sides2everystory

This is purely a distribution of wealth question.


Given the experience in the UK of the last three generations (say) we have (1) the "Never had it so goods" who are those who may need the care now because they have lived far longer than they originally expected, then we have (2) their offspring - the highly educated baby boomers, some of whom have used their education for furthering greed and are powering the massive redistributions of wealth into the hands of the few as we speak, and then (3) there are the offspring of baby-boomers - those who now find they cannot get a job or a house and are totally disillusioned because their parents taught them how it was supposed to work i.e. they would do better than their parents. It wasn't a lie, it was just a terrible misunderstanding of what real greed (which no-one in this thread has yet touched upon) does to normal families in what appear to be stable "western" developed economies like ours but which have been systematically undermined by massively corrupted corporate motive and boundless immorality starting at the top and inculcated to all that value their jobs with corporates.

The never had it so goods were also largely those who endured World War 2.

I believe we became a nation of good people after we rebuilt our economy after WW2.

Then it was realised that pension schemes contained a hell of a lot of assets. Nationalised industries contained a hell of a lot of wealth. The new captains of industry in the 80s onwards were not satisfied with reasonable levels of profit. They started leaving morality behind - as something they pretended once a year on Thanksgiving. As people at the helm of global businesses they had got a taste for what had been achieved in a few other dark places in our world in a short space of time. Blood and famine were but an inconvenience. Operators like that have manoeuvred to get rich quick on our state owned and pension owned assets. For that to start happening they had to get governments to privatise stuff (which of course they did starting with Thatcher), and to thin down government and "let market forces" take over.

We have reached a state of affairs where our government very much supports such businesses even if it hurts people (in this case senior citizens with a strong sense of pride in family independence) who are very much wondering what their life was about if they couldn't work hard, save hard and then be in a position to help their floundering grandchildren who have lately been converted into a casualised labour force which looks very much like it did in the 1930s.

There is a big picture here. Don't get sidelined into who has a house and who still rents from the council. Your enemy is not your Dad's old workmate who happened to save a bit more, buy his council house, forgo new cars, grew his own vegetables on the allotment, didn't smoke much, didn't drink much, only went to the bookies on Grand National Day.

The enemy is big business who are hoovering wealth from the poorer end of society like no tomorrow with the full support of government. A government that trivialises Health & Safety At Work, and denies the right to complain about wrongdoing at work, a government that would yoke our youngest and brightest to horrible extra tax burdens for the best part of their lives to pay for a proper education, and a government that rather than tax big business and the rich would take a two up two down from a sensible working man who earned every penny of it with his own sweat. The swingometer of general elections past was once a reasonable indicator of some modest redistribution of wealth to come. The balance has been swung far too far the wrong way and in fact the pointer fell right off a long time ago and has been thrown away so no-one really knows what to expect next. It is a classic deliberate confusion of the masses. You all thought mobile phone tariffs and energy tariffs were deliberately confusing? You are right of course, but the way our governments are deliberately confusing us and scaring us into believing that only we as individuals can solve their massive economic crises is all hype. We know where all the money flows are and they are corporate not private. The national debt they are all talking about is disgracefully exploded interest. The Greeks know it best. Let big business be forced to forgive it all. Rework it all and rebalance it all at the 2%pa our PM keeps waving under our noses like it means something, then we'd see where the real debt was and who has been sucking on the teat far too long and making no real contribution to lasting wealth.


That is what baby boomers and some grandchildren are complaining about - not the loss of 'their' inheritance, but the daylight robbery occurring under their nose daily, at the petrol stations, the banks, the phone companies, the energy companies and at their parents' and grandparents' houses.

roddydogs

pippinpuss wrote: »

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-

Only applies to the last person in the home, provided their over 60.

katyboo123

I just don't think that people who have had a frugal life and saved and paid off their mortgage and have savings, etc should be penalised. I think they should have the money to themselves and they should be allowed to spend it as they want.

It's just not fair that if they blew it all in Vegas the week before they got sick they'd get the same care anyway!

Arthurian

I can see a screenplay in this. A couple of pensioners decide to go to Vegas to gamble everything. If they win, they can afford care home places. If they lose, they are given care home places. That's the plan. Colin Firth stars as the lawyer who argues that it wasn't deliberate deprivation of assets.

rinabean

Of course people shouldn't have to sell their homes. But once you're no longer living in it, it's no longer your home. It's a house - an inheritance. The question is really "should I not get my inheritance just because granny had the audacity to live beyond her useful years?" and the answer is obviously no, you shouldn't.

And penalised? It's only the younger people in the family being penalised. I wonder if the people saying this really want great uncle so-and-so to sell up and blow it all on whatever takes his fancy. I very much doubt it. It's sheer greed speaking.

I want to inherit the houses in my family, or at least the wealth in them. I don't see how I'll ever hope to own a house of my own otherwise. But unless my relatives drop dead tomorrow, or get hit by a car, I won't. And I don't want them to drop dead tomorrow, so I have to be okay with that. Somebody has to pay for care. I can't afford to, and I don't think relatives should be forced to anyway (you don't know what might have gone on in their pasts.) So it makes sense for people who have assets to use them to fund their own care, doesn't it?

(And the reward for owning a house is, guess what, owning a house. There doesn't need to be further reward. It is the reward. If you are not suggesting rewarding people for owning houses, you are suggesting penalising people for not. Again, the penalty for not owning a home is not owning a home. Some very petty people on here today.)

jamesd

katyboo123 wrote: »

It's just not fair that if they blew it all in Vegas the week before they got sick they'd get the same care anyway!

They don't get the same care necessarily. The councils just have to provide care in whatever the low bidder places that meet minimum standards are. They don't have to be in the council area. Someone with private resources, including a house to sell, can have a free choice of anything that they can afford.

There's a split here between what we want to provide as society for those who are unfortunate, what we do about those who have the means but refuse to use those means (as with all means tested benefits, we coerce them by not paying or paying and using legal means to get the money) and what we do for those who do have the means and want to arrange a better quality than the state provides. For the healthcare part we simply pay because we've taken the view as a society that we should pay for healthcare.

It's fairly easy already to avoid the loss of the house, just give it away before there's any sign of a need for care. There are substantial risks because you no longer own it but that's solved the problem of sale to pay costs. Or sell it and rent, living high on the proceeds when there's no sign of care so the state will have to pay.

MrGumby

dogflyinghigh wrote: »

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

Completely agree. Why should those who have been careful with their money be penalised, when those who spend everything as they go, on fancy cars and holidays, booze and cigarettes, get free care?

My brother has earned at least as much as me in his lifetime but spent it all, so qualifies for various benefits and will get free care. I've always always had a good standard of living but not squandered money, so have never claimed a penny from the state and own a pretty good house. I'd like to leave the house to my children, but the state will take it if I need care.

Very unfair. Where's the incentive to save?