Please can anyone advise RE: paid mortgage, nursing home bereavement disability&more

midnightlady

I wondered if anyone could be kind enough to help us please as we are in a huge state of confusion.
In 1959, when I was two years old my Mother, Father, & myself moved into a rented house where I grew up
In 1996, the Landlord decided to sell all his properties (ours being one of them) & gave us the option of purchasing the house. I was the only family member in full time employment
Obviously, by this time as my Mother & Father were retired, & were living from their state & occupational pension. All 3 of us were named on the house deeds & mortgage
I married my disabled wife who is in receipt of disability benefits in 1998 – I moved out & we had a son in 1999
In 2006 my Father passed away & myself & my family came back to live in the house I grew up in to be my Mother’s carer as she was suffering with Dementia,
I had to leave work after working for the same company over 33 years to take care of both my Wife & Mother as my Mother’s condition deteriorated & 2 years we later had to make the heart breaking decision of putting her into a Nursing home where she would receive all the professional care needed, this was paid for by her own state pension & part of my late Father’s Occupational pension.
As my mother was named on the deeds of the house the local council authority took into consideration that my wife was in receipt of dla high rate care low rate mobility & sent a letter stating that owing to this my mother’s share of the property would be temporarily disregarded & note would be placed with the land registry as long as my wife was living there & was still in receipt of her dla & i was still her carer.
My mother then passed away in 2008 after spending 13 months in the care home. (She had no savings or funeral plan)
There was no deferred agreement taken out just a letter saying owing to my wife’s criteria it would be temporarily disregarded, does this mean the council would want my Mother’s share of the house or would it of ended when she passed away?
Does this mean that now if i/we sell the house the council will want any share of the house or will the temporary disregard notice have ended when she died?
This house is dangerous for my wife who often falls down the stairs, unless it’s imperative she goes out i,e Dr or Dentist she lives in the bedroom
We have no savings at all
Any help would be most appreciated as we are on disability benefits & worried sick
Thank you so much for reading

Paul_the_Painter

Worst case scenario is that the council will want the care home fees they paid for 13 months, this would be something in the region of £500-800/week. But the payments made from the pensions would be taken into account, so perhaps £300-£500/week. Ballpark I would guess at about £25,000.
1st thing for you to do is to go to the land registry website and see if they did actually place a charge on the property, they may not have, on which case happy days!
Then if they did you will need some professional advice, either citizens advice, or perhaps through any charities that are relevant to your or your wife's condition.

AdrianC

Cutting through a lot of stuff that doesn't make any difference...

Your mother was joint owner of the property, so had assets (albeit non-liquid) significantly greater than the threshold for having her care costs paid.
She spent time in care, during which time the council paid her costs, because you and your wife also live in the house, so it could not be sold easily.
The council are now pointing out that they need reimbursing.

Yes, you owe the council the fees they paid. If you sell the house, that debt will come due, and their repayment should come out of the sale.

silvercar

There is a similar question on this in the "Money" section of today's "Sunday Times".

Quoting it now but it may get deleted if the powers that be think that it is wrong to copy stuff of the internet that is behind a pay wall.

MY FATHER was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in May 2011, and was unable to cook for himself. We organised social care visits, paid for partly by us and partly by the local authority, Hertfordshire county council.

By February 2012 it was evident he needed to move to a care home. We found a local one and I paid part of the private fees, while the council paid the rest. My father had few assets, apart from equity in his apartment of £48,000 and liquid assets of £11,000.

By the time he passed away in March 2013, we had paid £4,268 direct to the care home and the council had paid £14,374. Within two weeks, the council had made a demand on the estate for the full repayment of its funding. Our solicitor insisted this sum should be repaid immediately, so I signed it over.

Since then, many of our friends and relatives have told me that the council had a duty of care to provide my father with accommodation and nursing, if his poor health demanded it. Doctor reports clearly show this was the case.

In May 2013, I appointed solicitors specialising in retrospective claims for NHS-funded healthcare, but we seem to be getting nowhere.

Now, nearly two years after my father died, I have been asked for proof of identity, as a new entity is handling the claim on behalf of the council. Is it unreasonable to feel angry at the way the council is dragging its heels, when it demanded I pay its bill within seven days?

JILL REPLIES Based purely on the capital your father held in liquid form and in his home, he would not have qualified for local authority help with care fees. Currently, anyone with assets worth £23,250 or more must pay for their own care home fees, and your father held £59,000.

In some cases, councils will temporarily cover the costs of care, either through a “deferred payment arrangement” or by accruing a debt against the care recipient’s assets, repayable on their death.

It seems Hertfordshire county council did the latter. However, you have made a retrospective claim for free NHS continuing healthcare since your father was first diagnosed with dementia.

Unfortunately, in 2013 the government set a deadline for retrospective applications for care received between April 2011 and March 2012. This encouraged a flood of applications, and your claim has been delayed by hundreds of others received by the Herts Valleys Clinical Commissioning Group.

The commissioning group said: “The review team will often need to contact many organisations for an individual claim in order to get the correct records to enable it to carry out each review thoroughly.

The order in which reviews is carried out is by completeness of records.” All retrospective claims are expected to be completed by May 2016.

I can understand why you are distressed and angry but I’m afraid there is no option other than to wait.

dodger1

OP, what was the value of the house when your mum passed away in 2008. Was a mortgage still being paid and if so what was the equity in the property.

Mojisola

midnightlady wrote: »

In 2006 my Father passed away & myself & my family came back to live in the house I grew up in to be my Mother’s carer as she was suffering with Dementia,

I had to leave work after working for the same company over 33 years to take care of both my Wife & Mother as my Mother’s condition deteriorated & 2 years we later had to make the heart breaking decision of putting her into a Nursing home where she would receive all the professional care needed, this was paid for by her own state pension & part of my late Father’s Occupational pension.

As my mother was named on the deeds of the house the local council authority took into consideration that my wife was in receipt of dla high rate care low rate mobility & sent a letter stating that owing to this my mother’s share of the property would be temporarily disregarded & note would be placed with the land registry as long as my wife was living there & was still in receipt of her dla & i was still her carer.

My mother then passed away in 2008 after spending 13 months in the care home. (She had no savings or funeral plan)

The value of the house was disregarded because of your wife's condition and this reason was in place for the whole time your mother was in residential care.

The council should not be going back on that agreement now.

If you had sold the house while your mother was still alive, a percentage of the house value would have been your mother's and that would have become available to pay for her care.

bris

It's temporarily disregarded because they wont try to force the sale of the house with residents still in it, but when it's sold the asset is released. The main word here is temporarily, they are not going back on anything.

There are thousands of homes with council charging orders on them, I believe they can even charge interest on the money due too.

Mojisola

bris wrote: »

It's temporarily disregarded because they wont try to force the sale of the house with residents still in it, but when it's sold the asset is released. The main word here is temporarily, they are not going back on anything.

There are thousands of homes with council charging orders on them, I believe they can even charge interest on the money due too.

If a property is 'disregarded', it is not counted in the financial assessment.

If the property was considered part of the person's financial assessment, a charge would have been put on the property at the time of assessment.

CRAG - 
7.003 Where the resident no longer occupies a dwelling as their home, its value should still be disregarded where it is occupied in whole or in part as their only or main home by .... a relative of the resident's family who ... is incapacitated.

cavework

bris wrote: »

It's temporarily disregarded because they wont try to force the sale of the house with residents still in it, but when it's sold the asset is released. The main word here is temporarily, they are not going back on anything.

There are thousands of homes with council charging orders on them, I believe they can even charge interest on the money due too.

I think this is incorrect as the mother only owned 50% of the property or less and they could be tenants in common.
The LA could only assess her asset by a valuation based on someone being willing to buy her half of the property NOT on the full value of the property divided by 50%.
As there are very few people who would buy half a house the value would be very small or nil.
The LA should not have placed a charge on the property in the first place.
Hope this helps