Help Trying to remove house to pay for carehome fees

Fiveinourhouse

Please can anyone help? My mother in law has been in hospital. She owns her own house. They are now looking to move her into a carehome but the council are planning to sell her home to pay the fees.
What can we do to stop this? We don’t live close but my husband is trying his hardest to stop them taking her home. He’s tried phoning people today but no one will actually take his calls.
Can they actually do this? We aren’t looking for her money. We just want to make sure she’s not robbed.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Deborah

Browntoa

They can do it

It's in the form of a first charge on the land registry

I'll move the thread to a better area of the forums

Browntoa

This explains it

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/care/paying-for-care/paying-for-a-care-home/do-i-have-to-sell-my-home-to-pay-for-care/

Cheeky_Monkey

Fiveinourhouse wrote: »

Please can anyone help? My mother in law has been in hospital. She owns her own house. They are now looking to move her into a carehome but the council are planning to sell her home to pay the fees.
What can we do to stop this? We don’t live close but my husband is trying his hardest to stop them taking her home. He’s tried phoning people today but no one will actually take his calls.
Can they actually do this? We aren’t looking for her money. We just want to make sure she’s not robbed.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Deborah

What exactly are you looking for then?

BAFE

Does she have any other way of paying for her care? They will only take the house as a last resort, what other funds has she?

elsien

Does she need to be in a care home? Have all other possible options been explored? Does she have any nursing (as opposed to personal and social care) needs, and if so has a CHC nursing needs assessment been carried out?
If no nursing needs, has she had a Care Act assessment?
If she is assessed to need residential care but does not have nursing needs, has she had a financial assessment?
Is there anyone else living in the house now she is no longer there?
If she is assessed to be a self-funder, then how else would you suggest that she pays for the care she needs if she is not willing to sell the house that she no longer needs?

ETA - the local authority will not sell the house - they can't as they do not own it - but as already said they can expect that it is sold to cover her costs.
Does your MIL have capacity, or is there any sort of power of attorney in place?

tacpot12

Given that your mother-in-law has been in hospital and the local authority want to move her to a care home it is possible that her care costs should be paid for by the NHS. This is not an area where I am an expert but I understand that the purpose of the CHC Nursing Needs assessment is to determine if her nursing needs are sufficient for the NHS to pay for her care.


Your Husband might be having problems getting anyone to speak to him if he doesn't have Power of Attorney for his mother. If he doesn't have this, and she has capacity to grant a Power of Attorney, getting this in place quickly might allow your husband to start helping his mother to sell the home or perhaps put a deferred payment agreement in place.

Making sure your mother-in-law has a valid Will will also help ensure that if the property is sold after her death the best price is achieved.

SandraX

Scary stuff. People have worked all of their lives, paid a high percentage of their wages to pay of the mortgage, massive maintenance costs/etc - Tores belating that they are rewarding hard work and then this happens. She should have sold the house and moved into social housing and gifted the money a few years ago.

I'm really sorry and hope it works out for you and your OH

tacpot12

While a deferred payment agreement can sound like a good idea, the property will need insuring, which can be very difficult to arrange for unoccupied properties. If your mother-in-law wanted to rent the property out, this would reduce the costs that would be owed when she died, but someone would have to manage the property. If you or husband has no experience of being a landlord, I would suggest that selling the property for the best price you can get now might be the best option for your mother and your husband. Any of the sale proceeds not used to care for your mother-in-law would remain hers to be distributed via her will.

TELLIT01

If you have to take on the council be prepared for a very hard time. My friend's mother had to go into care and the council changed the locks on the house and refused to allow the family access even to remove their own property from the house. The friend was happy to have somebody from the council present to ensure that they did only remove their own stuff. It was mainly clothes as the couple had been moving around quite a bit and it was easier to leave their 'spare' stuff at the mother's house.
The house was broken in to after the council had secured it but the council said they weren't responsible for repairing the damage.
Even when it became clear that the house was held in a legal trust (I don't know the details), and all documentation was supplied by the trust solicitors, the council tried to fight every inch of the way until the solicitors told the council they would take them to court. The council finally backed down.

TELLIT01

SandraX wrote: »

Scary stuff. People have worked all of their lives, paid a high percentage of their wages to pay of the mortgage, massive maintenance costs/etc - Tores belating that they are rewarding hard work and then this happens. She should have sold the house and moved into social housing and gifted the money a few years ago.

I'm really sorry and hope it works out for you and your OH

If somebody sold their property they would not get social housing because they would still have money. If they gifted the money and then tried to obtain social housing they still wouldn't get it because they would be deemed (a) to have made themselves deliberately homeless and (b) deprivation of capital would be assumed by the LA.