Transferring significant sums of money between family

born_again

I would not worry about taking you mother into the bank. But if they take her to a room to sort the transfers. Leave her too it. As she will have to answer questions about the transfer. 

xylophone

Does your mother own her own home?  If so, depending on the value, DoA may be less of a consideration.

She may prefer to transfer the money from her ISA account (s) to her current account and give each of you a cheque.

If the bank queries the transfer (s), she can explain that for personal reasons, she has decided to make gifts to her children.

Keep_pedalling

Your mother really should not do this, it seems she has already transferred her house to you in an attempt to avoid care costs, and both the house transfer and this gift is going to be viewed as deliberate deprivation of assets.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6317770/life-rent-scotland#latest

Do you really want to risk your mother ending up in an over my dead body care home?

IanManc

In your other thread you reveal that your family has already undertaken one deliberate deprivation exercise - or as you euphemistically put it "a means of protecting our mother's property" so your response on this thread of "I wouldn't say so" when asked if you are trying to avoid inheritance tax or care home fees has zero credibility.

I really really hope you don't get away with it.

It's sad that your mother has offspring who care more about getting their hands on her money than on her having enough for a place in a decent care home if she needs it.

whatstheplan

Some of the comments are disappointing although I partly see where they are coming from.  This whole conversation was kicked off by my mother, not instigated by her apparently (to some on here) uncaring children.  And, from our perspective, they (the property and savings aspects) are separate, although I take on board this might not be the view of the authorities looking at cold hard facts, timelines etc.

Whether you elect to believe my position or not, the question in this topic is purely driven by a desire from our mother to give her children some of her hard earned now so we can make use of it, as oppose to it sitting there.  Her words, not mine or my siblings.  As she gets on in years, she's starting to consider such things.

Let me assure those that think I'm uncaring, if it was a choice of having my mother on this earth for a few more years (in good health) vs 'getting my hands on the £££' I'd choose the former all day long.

I'll leave it there.

robber2

I think the point most are trying to make is that it doesnt matter whether the ideas have been raised by either your mother or her children, you should all be very careful that whatever action you and your mum take dont fall foul of deliberate deprivation of assets rules and that you (her children ) are fully aware of your potential inheritance tax liabilities.

IanManc

whatstheplan said:

Some of the comments are disappointing although I partly see where they are coming from.  This whole conversation was kicked off by my mother, not instigated by her apparently (to some on here) uncaring children.  And, from our perspective, they (the property and savings aspects) are separate, although I take on board this might not be the view of the authorities looking at cold hard facts, timelines etc.

Whether you elect to believe my position or not, the question in this topic is purely driven by a desire from our mother to give her children some of her hard earned now so we can make use of it, as oppose to it sitting there.  Her words, not mine or my siblings.  As she gets on in years, she's starting to consider such things.

Let me assure those that think I'm uncaring, if it was a choice of having my mother on this earth for a few more years (in good health) vs 'getting my hands on the £££' I'd choose the former all day long.

I'll leave it there.

Your "perspective" that the property and savings aspects are separate bears no relation to the applicable law, or to reality. 

The choice you have cited in your penultimate paragraph is a bogus one too. You did not have that choice to make and it is irrelevant. However long your mother has got left, you and your sibling have taken her house and are seeking advice on how to get your hands on two thirds of the money in her ISA.

Your air of injured innocence is bogus as well. Your mother may well have started the conversation about her assets, but you and your sibling could have advised her that it would be wrong to do it and that it wouldn't work in terms of "protecting" what she had; and you could both could simply have told her that you wouldn't accept what she was offering because it wasn't in her best interests, which it clearly and obviously isn't.

But you didn't do that. The pound signs lit up in your eyes and you took what you could, then asked for advice on here about how you could get away with taking more. You had a choice, and you chose to fill your boots.

However, your plans are flawed.

The transfer of the house is a gift with reservation, because your mother has the right to still live there. Because of that the house will stay as part of her estate under section 102 of the Finance Act 1986 and the seven year gift rule does not apply to it because she's deemed not to have given it away.

Similarly, as far as care home costs are concerned the house has been subject to a scheme of deliberate deprivation, and if your mother needs care the council will either put a charge on the house to recoup the care costs when it is sold, or get a court order to force its sale and have the proceeds paid into court so that the care fees can be paid out of it.

If your mother was still in the care home after the proceeds of sale of the house were exhausted, or there was no more equity left in it and the charge on the property had become ineffective, then the fees would be paid from the money still left in her ISA after you and your sibling had plundered it, down to the point of £18000 in assets (in Scotland) which your mother would be able to keep, and then the council would come to you and your sibling with a bill to pay the fees out of the  "£30-40k" each you had got from her ISA. They would take you to court if you didn't pay, citing the fact that you were holding assets of your mother's which had been subject of deliberate deprivation. 

If you and your sibling do get  £30-40k from your mother's ISA then if she lives for more than seven years and doesn't need local authority funded care then in terms of inheritance tax mitigation that bit of your plan would actually work.

I hope your ill gotten gains bring you no pleasure or peace.

When my parents were very old and worried about their assets I refused to accept anything because if they needed to go into a care home I wanted them to be able to go into one where friends of theirs had lived, which is like a hotel, with lovely food, nice décor, and happy residents; and not a large nearby care home that is full of council funded residents which has strip lights, tatty furniture, broken floor tiles, and which permanently smells of urine.

As it happens neither of them needed residential care and I looked after them at home. When they died I paid some inheritance tax quite happily, in the knowledge that their last few years were spent knowing that they could afford to go into the decent home they liked for the rest of their lives if they needed to.

But that's because I'm a better person than you are.

Keep_pedalling

whatstheplan said:

Some of the comments are disappointing although I partly see where they are coming from.  This whole conversation was kicked off by my mother, not instigated by her apparently (to some on here) uncaring children.  And, from our perspective, they (the property and savings aspects) are separate, although I take on board this might not be the view of the authorities looking at cold hard facts, timelines etc.

Whether you elect to believe my position or not, the question in this topic is purely driven by a desire from our mother to give her children some of her hard earned now so we can make use of it, as oppose to it sitting there.  Her words, not mine or my siblings.  As she gets on in years, she's starting to consider such things.

Let me assure those that think I'm uncaring, if it was a choice of having my mother on this earth for a few more years (in good health) vs 'getting my hands on the £££' I'd choose the former all day long.

I'll leave it there.

Regardless of who is driving this idea, you know she should not be doing it and you should be discouraging her from doing so. The gift of money would be fine if she still owned her own house but she should not compound that mistake by reducing her savings to such a small amount.

What happens to her if one of you predeceases her or ends up in a financial mess following a divorce? 

Who is going to pay for the upkeep of the house if major repairs are required? £30 does not go far and would pay for about 6 months of residential care.