Mum becoming homeless due to frozen account.

elsien

Pugsley_Heckford wrote: »

Hi my brother took mum in her wheelchair to open the account and to the bank. She has used the phone to change her details. She cannot go back to the house as she cannot get in it or move around the house due to the layout and her physical deterioration. Dad split up with her in hospital before a secondary infection set in and he did it face to face as mum had been asking people to wheel her up.
We don't know what need dad will have and the doctors can't give any answers. Dad is also abusive but mum has always stood by him. He does not want anything to do with me or my brother. We do not know what type of care he will need but want to make sure he has funds to make choices.

All the more reason that the house is disregarded till you have a clearer picture of his future needs.
I added some other things into my previous post, btw, in case you missed it while I was amending.

Terry_Towelling

Pugsley_Heckford wrote: »

Hi and yes I have asked if they can defer payment. Because it is recommended she go into a supported flat and not residential care my mum should be self funding because the house is over 46 K and half of that is over 23K which makes her self funding. It is just she cannot access any of the monies and my dad may need to go back into the house.

The value of the house probably would not be taken into consideration for a self-funding assessment if a spouse/dependent may have to live in it, so do you know why it has been, and when was the financial assessment done?

What does your mum think about not returning home?

Pugsley_Heckford

Thank you I will speak with the social worker again tomorrow. I feel a bit more confident at least she won't be homeless.

Pugsley_Heckford

Thank you, my mum is really sad and upset she has been begging dad to move to a bungalow or a flat for the last 10 years but dad refused to move.

Terry_Towelling

Well, I have to hand it to you, Pugsley. What has befallen your family all at once must require tremendous mental and emotional fortitude to deal with. I admire that.

I don't think I'd have had that much strength of character to function so well to organise a flat and carers and have your mum wheeled up to the bank (before discharge from hospital) and cope with the strain. You will have discovered that two carers, four times a day, is going to cost between £3k and £4K per month - I hope your mum's pensions will cover that as you seem to think. Add to that the unfortunate decision to unnecessarily mess around with a joint bank account when she could have simply moved her share out to another account without doing anything too rash.

All this to cope with and you had the wherewithal to create yourself a profile on a money-saving forum with a humourous pseudonym (I am assuming it's not your real name) and also create a really punchy, sensationalist thread title. You have my respect (is that the word?) and I wish you and your mum well. As for your dad, I dread to think what may befall him, given what you have said, but, hopefully, he will recover and realise that he didn't mean to be so awful to his wife in her hour of need.

There is one final thing that you may have overlooked and will need to address quite quickly. With their only account frozen, what is going to happen to all of the regular direct debits that are almost certainly going to be coming out to pay all of the usual household bills - council tax, water rates, energy bills? Sorry, but more for you to worry about.

Keep us posted; I'd really like to see a happy outcome to this terrible tragedy.

Ben8282

There are a number of things about this situation which don't really add up.
MS is a degenerative condition. What exactly has happened to your mum that she has gone from being able to cope at home with no assistance other than possibly from your dad to being confined to a wheelchair and needing two carers four times a day. Two carers four times a day is usually reserved for those who are very ill usually those on end of life care and would seem somewhat inappropriate for someone who is well enough to be taken to the bank (albeit in a wheelchair) and able to use her phone to transfer her pensions to a new account. As you have no POA's she must have been able to do all this herself and must have satisfied the bank that she was acting normally.
Hospitals do not like in-patients being taken out of the hospital and I am surprised that they agreed to it. I am especially surprised that they would have agreed to it if her condition is such that she requires two carers four times a day.
I also think that you are being a bit premature with regard to the cost of her care. When your mum is discharged from hospital, carers will be provided free of charge for an initial period. If she is really as bad as is implied by the need for two carers four times a day she may even qualify for NHS continuing care funding. No financial assessment should have been carried out this early. This would normally occur after she has been discharged and prior to the end of the initial free period of care. It is also premature for her to be told that she will be self funding.
The idea of moving her into a rented flat seems very odd to me. Why has she abandoned her house? Irrespective of whether or not the value of the house will or will not be taken into consideration, her moving out of it will in no way change the fact that she remains half owner of it and her assets will remain unchanged. In fact, by moving out of the house and into rented accommodation, she is increasing the likelihood that someone may suggest that it be sold to pay for her care. Nobody would suggest this if she were actually living in the house unless she were to need to be admitted to a care home. At the very worse, so long as she was living in the house, the council may want to put a charge on the property to cover her share of care costs but nothing more.
With regard to your dad, I don't believe that you have actually said what is wrong with him but have mentioned only a secondary infection. It is well known that infections can cause serious cognitive problems in the elderly, even delirium. It astounds me that anybody is paying any attention to him. Your statement about him being too ill to even be assessed as to competence confirms this. How can your mum. your bother and yourself possibly be taking him seriously? What sort of loving family are you? From what you have wrote I get the impression that it is in fact your mum who has decided to abandon your dad in his hour of need, moving out of the family home into rented accommodation presumably to live alone her with the two carers coming four times a day. and you and your brother are assisting her by taking her to the bank to attempt to empty the joint bank account.

Skibunny40

If the bank agreed to split the joint bank account ( or at least freeze it) based on only your mum's say so, could she just go back and say everything is okay again, they're not splitting up & reinstate the joint account?!

I also don't understand why she's moving out of the house - has an OT been out to advise on modifications to the house so that it's suitable for her? I'm sure she would either be kept in hospital or put in respite care until the work was carried out.

Terry_Towelling

Skibunny40 wrote: »

If the bank agreed to split the joint bank account ( or at least freeze it) based on only your mum's say so, could she just go back and say everything is okay again, they're not splitting up & reinstate the joint account?!

I also don't understand why she's moving out of the house - has an OT been out to advise on modifications to the house so that it's suitable for her? I'm sure she would either be kept in hospital or put in respite care until the work was carried out.

These are the sort of issues that come to mind when you take the OP at face value.

badger09

Terry_Towelling wrote: »

These are the sort of issues that come to mind when you take the OP at face value.

I'm amazed that some posters appear to have done just that:cool:

elsien

Because I'd rather give someone the benefit of the doubt and be proved wrong than call troll on people who may genuinely need help.