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

2sides2everystory

Well what you have said is insensitive to a great many caring family members. Don't you think that instead of just disappearing in a huff of your own making you might acknowledge that your experience may not be wide enough yet for you to hold all the answers?

My parents are quite immobile although on a good day they can still drive a little to the shops and chemist and health centre. They can't walk very far, and they can't maintain their own home very well without help which at the moment we can provide.

But they are as old as HM The Queen and Prince Philip and rather more worn out. Unlike the odds for their majesties, I do not imagine for one minute that the odds are good for my parents to see out all their days in their own home. One maybe but almost certainly not both.

So leave the thread if your views are too narrow to return, but please do not labour under any false illusion that you were in any important sense right to have posted what you did.

Torry_Quine

meher wrote: »

Well, we can see what works and what's dysfunctional for ourselves - there's little to achieve by handwaving and taking on the offended role. I can see people are lining up and demanding that tax payers pay for them to save their inheritance. If a family network weren't so dysfunctional, instead of taking on the offending role, you'd be assuming the caring role. I've had my say and am done on this thread; not going to level myself with posts that I cannot relate with.

My family is in no way dysfunctional but unable to give the specialised 24 hour a day care that is needed. Has it even crossed your mind that in some cases the person would rather go into care than have a family member perform personal care!:mad:

katyboo123

Arthurian wrote: »

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.

HAHAHA funny as...

philand

Care in old age should be provided free in the same way as the NHS. It could be funded by an additional percentage on estate duty for all estates. This revenue must be ring fenced and used only for this purpose. Problem solved - and nobody needs to worry about bad luck near the end of life.

jamesd

Without checking the numbers I'm not sure that even taking 100% of the value of all estates that pay inheritance tax would be enough to pay for this. I expect that we'd have to lower the inheritance tax threshold substantially until it included lots of normal people instead of only the relatively well off. It raised only £3.1 billion between 2007-09 so current rates and limits aren't going to come anywhere near to meeting the cost. Those years were before the change that let the allowances of a couple be combined so revenue probably fell from 2008-9 onwards.

Using the assets that people have when they die does seem like a good approach to me since at that point they no longer need those assets. But trying to raise the money with inheritance tax at the required levels on those who don't need the care would probably be extremely unpopular.

TonySharp1803

On the one hand if the taxpayer pays the care costs this will usually result in the cared person's house being left to their loved ones so the taxpayer is providing an inheritance for some, presumably, fit and healthy individual. If they have loved ones deserving of this inheritance why don't they look after the person needing care - after all that caree should be a loved one! If they don't have loved ones where is the harm in selling their house now. The only case I know of personally, the "loved one" has organised the renting of the home to contribute to the care costs and they are making up any shortfall between the care costs and the total of pensions and rent. This despite the fact that they actually have a mortgage arranged on the house in question so that if it was sold the proceeds would not go to the carers fees but be paid out to the relatives to repay the mortgage.
On the other hand anyone needing care is by definition unable to care for themselves through illness/infirmity so why don't they qualify for free 'Healthcare' just like the penniless, and quite probably profligate, person in the next room.
On balance I am going to vote for 'sell the home' but I think that the current proposal that care costs should be capped is probably the fairest one

TonySharp1803

Arthurian wrote: »

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.

But even if it was deliberate deprivation of assets what are 'they' going to do about it. Put the pensioners out on the street to starve?

1jeannie

I have look after my mother for 17years after the death of my father. She found it hard to cope alone and I felt I owed her so eventually became her carer for want of a better word. You don,t know how dependant they become on you, she's 91 this year and I am still trapped in this worsening situation. She does not want to go into a home and in all my 51 years she has only been in hospital 2 weeks. To make matters worst my 'brother' casually steps in while I was away and took over power of atorney behind my back without so much as a consultation with me.:mad: Talk about getting the dirty end of the stick.
There should be people to help the aged and stop people taking advantage of them. People should be made to be more open and all dicisions should be logged somewhere to clarify that the best is being done for individual people.
No they should not take a persons home to pay for care but if that person has any money maybe over a certain amount that should be used towards there care bill. But i wouldn't like to be the person to tell my mother she had to go into a home.:eek:

stevemcol

I'm not big on inheritance. I think you should make your own way in the world and not rely on mum & dad leaving you a pot of cash or property when they die.
My ideal view is that when care becomes appropriate, you sign your property across to the state and you are guaranteed first class care until you die; whether that's a supervised flat, rest home, care home or a progression of them all.


Don't worry about the guy in the next room who's contributed nothing. He will have no negative impact on you at all.

nameless_sir_ned

A bit of advice that I found in a brochure said that, at the will-making stage, it's quite legal for a couple to bequeath their 1/2 share of the family home to a son or daughter. It's done in such a way that the first to die leaves their 1/2 share, and if the second person needs to go into a home, then there is only 1/2 of the house value that can be claimed for nursing home fees.