Marrying to avoid house being taken

ade1982

I own a house, in my own name, and my girlfriend lives with me. We don't intend to get married any time soon.

There is a history of people needing to go into a carehome in my family. As I understand it, if I needed to go into a care home or similar in the future, because it is my asset, they could take it to pay for my care.

In the unlikely event things start to go downhill health wise, could we marry literally the day before I go into a home in order to protect her, or does it need to be a certain amount of time, so it's not a deprivation of assets?

TIA

HappyMJ

You can change the ownership of your property to give half of your house to your partner....but if it were me I'd just get married.

It takes a couple of months to get married. You need to give notice at a registry office and sort out a date. You can't just turn up at the registry office and get married whenever you like.

BigAunty

Age UK has a fact sheet on this.

Councils are fairly wise to this type of action - there is no limit as to the time when they can challenge a transfer of property into another person's name.

What their options are to prove this or steps they can take to recover the money, I don't know. Hopefully covered on the Age UK website.

Mojisola

ade1982 wrote: »

I own a house, in my own name, and my girlfriend lives with me. We don't intend to get married any time soon.

There is a history of people needing to go into a carehome in my family. As I understand it, if I needed to go into a care home or similar in the future, because it is my asset, they could take it to pay for my care.

Not if your GF was still going to live there.

If you're willing to get married at some point, why not do it now?

pigpen

if you get a marriage licence you can get married tomorrow.. but the minimum at registry office/church is 4 weeks notice.. if it is on the cards for the future just do it now if it puts your mind at rest but I cant see an occupied home being taken to provide care home fees.. that seems odd.

Mr_Toad

No need to get married.

If she is living with you then it is her home and they won't turn her out and make her homeless. In such cases the house is disregarded when it comes to funding.

Keep_pedalling

More importantly do you both have up to date wills in place? You partner won't be made homeless if you move into a care home but if you die without one she almost certainly will.

peachyprice

Even if you don't marry it's unlikely they'll expect your girlfriend to leave, they'll just put a charge on the house to be paid when you die.

Mojisola

peachyprice wrote: »

Even if you don't marry it's unlikely they'll expect your girlfriend to leave, they'll just put a charge on the house to be paid when you die.

The value of the property has to be completely disregarded while a spouse, civil partner or someone who lives with you as a partner continues to live in the house.

margaretclare

Well, I've heard of some strange reasons for marrying or not marrying, but this has to be the strangest of all.

What happened to love and romance? We're not long past Valentine's Day which was meant to be all about looooove.

This is the oddest thing I've heard of in a long time. No one can force you to go into a care home, at any stage in your life. You can always say no!

Rambosmum

mojisola is correct (this is part of my job for LA).