Mother-in-law and money

JReacher1

thorsoak said:

JReacher1 said:

And of that £134 a week the OP wants to take £100 of it

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/benefit-and-pension-rates-2020-to-2021/benefit-and-pension-rates-2020-to-2021#state-pension
Pension rate is £175 per week, which equates to £9,100 pa   and this lady also has a private pension.

That’s new state pension, it seems likely the OP’s MIL is on the old state pension. 

 

Without details I can’t count the private pension as it could be very small. My mum gets something paltry like £12 a month from her private pension.  

JReacher1

macman said:

JReacher1 said:

And of that £134 a week the OP wants to take £100 of it

No.He said £400pm, which is £92.30pw. 
Her income is not £134pw, iI's that plus her work pension (unknown but let's say £19pw) and savings interest (maybe £15pw. ). Total £168pw.
The OP is suggesting maybe £92pw, but appears open to compromise. The point is that there's a huge gulf between £92 and £19, and MIL doesn't seem prepared to offer a penny more than she's paying at present, which is clearly unsustainable. 
Her £1K doesn't just cover rent, it covers food, electricity, gas, water, insurance, phone, council tax... possibly transport...
What would you suggest is a reasonable compromise?

The majority of these figures are made up so are basically nonsense. 

Why is it unsustainable? The OP’s wife will have a view on the family finances and she is happy with the current arrangement. It seems only the OP has a problem with the current situation. 

chubster

Grumpy_chap said:

The OP has left out some quite important factors in all of this.

Is the OP's wife a single-child or are there other siblings to consider?  This will impact the way the current costs are perceived and also what may happen to any eventual inheritance that is not depleted.  It may also mean there are family considerations in any actions that are perceived to be "harsh" on the MIL (other than just MIL's feeling and wife's feelings).

With regard to the household finances, the OP explains the MIL's income (£8k/year) plus assets £80k.  The OP does not say what their position is though, simply the change:

• wife and I have been in reasonably well paid jobs 
• wife has now retired.  So presumably still gets a pension?
• I have just found out that my hours at work are being reduced so my pay will be less than half what it has been. 

Is there a mortgage on the shared house?
Are there other assets / investments in the family?
Irrespective of the MIL's contribution, what is the remaining income to Mr & Mrs OP? 

• If Mrs OP earned a "reasonable" salary, say £30k but is now on a pension of £20k and Mr OP was on £40k but now half, that still leaves £20k.  If there is no mortgage, then three people would survive quite comfortably on £40k and maybe why Mrs OP is reluctant to shake the boat.  
• Maybe Mr OP's "reasonable" salary was £250k so half is still loads, plus whatever Mrs OP get from pension plus, maybe £1m in other income-generating assets.  If the "adjustments" that Mr & Mrs OP now need to make is between Bollinger or Mumm's champagne, that is less harsh than some other choices.
• This is all speculation, though, maybe the family income is now very low and the MIL's income is affecting entitlement to benefits?

These factors all impact how reasonable or otherwise it is for Mr & Mrs OP to continue to subsidise MIL.  

That said, there is no reason why Mr & Mrs OP should subsidise MIL and, ideally, this situation would never have arisen.  BUT i sis reality and any change needs to be considerate.  If MIL has £8k income and only £1k on total household & living expenses including food, what does she spend the remainder on?  Days out, coffee chops, holidays?  Even changing the "rent" to £2k will be a big change to percentage residual spend for MIL.

Ultimately, though, MIL needs to pay more as less than £3 per day does not even cover food.

I guess it is all relative, with my wife's pension and my reduced hours the household income will be £32k in total. We have paid off our mortgage, we live in a large-ish house which we bought when houses in this area were cheap so there is quite a lot of equity in the house. I guess one solution would be to downsize to a much smaller house but MIL has made it clear she does not want to do this as the current house is large enough for her to have her own space. MIL does not drive, she does not go out or do any expensive hobbies and spends very little money, she has been on a couple of UK based holidays with my wife in the last few years but nothing fancy. I don't want MIL to think that she is paying 'rent' I just want her to contribute more to running a household. We certainly aren't champagne drinkers LOL and I am constantly looking at way of reducing our outgoings.

chubster

elsien said:

No-one should be relying on MIL's 80K as an inheritance to make up for the low payments now.
We none of us know what life is going to throw at us. If MIL needs to go into care, that money won't last long at all. Or she may meet someone and decide to get married. Or various other scenarios.
It's not your wife's inheritance till MIL passes, the will is read and there's still something left to leave. 

Yes those are very good points, my wife is an only child so in theory all of MIL's money goes to my wife but you just never know do you, I know of a couple of people who have burned through all of their savings paying for care home fees and leaving nothing really.

chubster

suki1964 said:

It is a very difficult situation. I know as I am in it myself

Mum and dad moved in with us, they gave us 100k to put towards a house that was big enough to house them as well, which is why we have a massive house, high heating costs, high maintenance costs 

At the time, they paid half the rates, half the heating and half the electric

They bought their own meals , done their own cooking 

Dad died. Mums health has deteriorated 

Mum is very wealthy and gets his full private pension, her own private pension plus state pension. Her pensions are higher then our joint wages combined

She's now home all day every day and feels the cold

She now longer cooks for herself, she's only fit to make a simple meal like get her cereal and make a sandwich, open a tin of something so I make her meals 6 days a week ( Saturdays I will leave her something that can be microwaved or she will make a salad up )

During lockdown she gave me her card one time to get the groceries that week, not seen it since lol

I buy everything she wants, I even buy her cats food

I was furloughed for 7 weeks, husband for 10, he got 2.5k self employment grant, I got £160 a week. His grant went towards the rates, insuring his car and the electric bill. We have been living on my wages to pay everything else. My car, the broadband, my phone, the house phone, food and everything else 

During furlough the fridge freezer died, the dishwasher died, my tv in my living room died and now my vacuum has died

Mother hasn't offered us a single penny towards the dishwasher nor fridge freezer and I won't ask

Mr S is of the same mind. it infuriates him that she is so quick to say how much money she has yet refuses to part with a penny when she must realise that things are very tight with us, but as he says he won't beg

If we hadn't had mum and dad move in with us we would have had a very nice reasonable sized modern house that was cheaper in terms of rates, maintenance, heating and electric to run and we would be a lot better off

Mums 83 this year and her health is deteriorating and she's getting to the stage dad got not long before he died so I know its not going to be forever so we just carry on. 

Im also in the unfortunate position of being her executor and also named as having POA if that time comes. I say unfortunate because I have two sisters, one whom is estranged from the rest of us through her own choice. Little sister is very supportive of me as she's in the same boat with her father in law and knows mother all too well. Elder sister seems to think that we benefitted from having mum move in with us and is sure to scrutinise every bank account to the last penny when the time comes which is why I suppose I won't ask for a penny from my mum, I don't want anyone to think I have lived off her

I know none of this helps the OP, but I guess I wanted to say families are never clear cut and its so often, as an outsider, easy to say you must do this and that, when for those living in the situation, its never easy

That does sound like a grim situation and yes you are totally right, what is 'normal' for one family is totally alien to another. It might seem strange asking for advice on a forum like this but I find it easier than talking to people I know and I want to get some different ideas. I have only discussed my situation with one friend and I was stunned, he just assumed that my MIL paid her way and that in fact we had it pretty easy. I do think that some older people lose touch with prices especially if they aren't out buying groceries and paying bills etc.. It must be harder in your situation if your siblings think that you are 'benefiting' from having your mother living with you, if I were you I'd keep a spreadsheet and all receipts! It's never easy dealing with family is it and as my Gran used to say "money is the root of all evil", not that she ever had any!

chubster

Grumpy_chap said:

I think really, for anyone to give good advice, the OP needs to share the 'back story' to why MIL lives with them, whether there are any other siblings, and what the household finances are.
In the absence of that, £1k/year seems unrealistically low.

OP here, the back story is that my wife is an only child and MIL has only a couple of surviving relatives who she hasn't spend much time with for many years, for a number of years we lived very near to MIL and my wife spent a lot of time with her. Both my wife and I wanted to move to an area a long distance away and my wife was keen for MIL to move with us as she would have been pretty much on her own, I agreed to this. 

Pollycat

chubster said:

I guess it is all relative, with my wife's pension and my reduced hours the household income will be £32k in total. We have paid off our mortgage, we live in a large-ish house which we bought when houses in this area were cheap so there is quite a lot of equity in the house. I guess one solution would be to downsize to a much smaller house but MIL has made it clear she does not want to do this as the current house is large enough for her to have her own space. MIL does not drive, she does not go out or do any expensive hobbies and spends very little money, she has been on a couple of UK based holidays with my wife in the last few years but nothing fancy. I don't want MIL to think that she is paying 'rent' I just want her to contribute more to running a household. We certainly aren't champagne drinkers LOL and I am constantly looking at way of reducing our outgoings.

Then MIL needs to accept that she needs to pay more than £1k per year for the privilege of having her own space.

As she doesn't drive, I guess you or your wife take her to appointments.

How much does she think a taxi would cost to the GP or hospital or optician?

Grumpy_chap

Thanks,
Is the £8k/year MIL income about right?
Did MIL make a previous capital contribution?

unholyangel

MalMonroe said:

macman said:

If she has a income of £8k plus p.a. and only pays you £1K, then I suppose that you could take the long view that, unless she is spending it all, then your wife's inheritance is accumulating by an additional £7Kpa....
But £1K wouldn't have covered the costs ten or twenty years ago. Even if you are content for her to live rent-free, then your council tax and utility bills split 3 ways would cost more than that.
Does she contribute to food bills etc?

She won't have an income of £8k plus pa at all. I don't know where that rumour started. It'll be far less than £7k pa. And she'll have clothes and shoes to buy, birthday and Christmas gifts, toiletries etc. According to OP she doesn't contribute to food bills, no. IMO she'd be better off living alone because she'd be entitled to all the pension credits and housing benefits, etc. She'd be even wealthier then. 

If she's in receipt of a full state pension, it can't be "far less" than £7k pa or else it wouldn't be a full state pension. She could technically be in receipt of a state pension around 12-14k (or more) if she inherited her husbands. 

She would only qualify for pension credit & HB if her income was less than £9k - it may not be. In that instance, it would bring her income up to 9k. HB doesn't necessarily cover the whole rent either. Let's assume it's only the full basic state pension she gets and the small private pension is just £120 pa. That means they'd get an extra £1900 maximum. Do you really think £36 a week is going to cover council tax, gas, electricity, any extra rent over the HB award, food, insurance, replacing items as they break etc.

I think you'll find she'd be much worse off, despite having more income coming in. 

chubster

Grumpy_chap said:

Thanks,
Is the £8k/year MIL income about right?
Did MIL make a previous capital contribution?

I am really not sure about her total income, it isn't something that gets discussed at a guess I would say £9k a year. When we bought the house MIL sold her house and paid £20k towards the house we live in now.