Implications of parent moving in

am123

Firstly, apologies if there have been posts similar in the past, I have searched multiple phrases but cannot find anything. 

My father very recently passed away after a very short illness that unfortunately came out of the blue. My mum (71) is now left with their house, purchased approx 5 years ago and worth c£200,000 (paid off in full). It is around an hour away from where I live and there is no other family left, so we have talked about her selling up and moving in with us. However, as she is still very much independent, she would prefer (as would my husband and I) to have an annexe for her. Our current house is just not workable to provide an annexe so we would need to sell up as well. I believe we would need to have legal paperwork drawn up to protect her share in the property etc. but where I’m getting really stuck is around how this would work from a financial perspective, as in, would there be tax implications (e.g inheritance/capital gains) and what would happen if she needed to go into care in the future and her money is tied up in our house? 

Any help/advice/experience would be very much appreciated. 

gwynlas

Type annex for parent into search and there are  number of threads. I have no idea about the monetary side of things but I believe that it is considered important for the bereaved to be given time to grieve in their own home and community before having to adjust to another life altering change.

Marmaduke123

Your mum is still relatively young and you describe her as very much independent. Perhaps in due course, when the shock of your father's death is not so recent, she may feel that she would be better off staying where she is, or looking for a small house or flat nearer to you. I think it's much too soon to make any decisions.

Flugelhorn

agree very soon to make such decisions - annexes can have variable success, many people find it better to have somewhere smaller and independent nearby 

elsien

She would need to protect any money she was putting into your house with a deed of trust or similar. In case for example it didn’t work out for her/you for any reason. 

She might want her money back to move somewhere else, or you and your husband might split up and need to realise your share of the assets. These might be unlikely scenarios but they are ones that you would have to think about.

Case if she did need care, then you would have to work out how to realise her share of your house – would you need to sell up, would you be able to afford to buy her out?

It does work for some people but there is a lot to take into consideration. 

I love my mother dearly but we have shared a house once before as adults and we drove each other completely up the wall. She’s not a great respecter of privacy at the best of times, so I’m pretty sure if I did build a granny annex she wouldn’t stay in it.

am123

Thanks all. I perhaps should’ve stated that before my father fell ill, it was a long term plan for them both to come here and for us to pool our money into one property that we could effectively ‘section’ into two living spaces. It’s not a spur of the moment decision and it’s not likely to happen for a a while yet as we need to clear machinery etc from my parent’s house before my mum can think about selling. 

Right now I’m just looking at the financial aspects so we can start to think about what to do. My parents ended up buying my grandmother’s house twice over, as they paid the mortgage but it was still in my grandma’s name and she unfortunately needed to go into a care home, so they had to buy the house off her. My mum does not want the same thing to happen to me, and having lost my dad in the short space of five months, neither of us want her to be isolated an hour away, god forbid a similar situation should occur. 

am123

gwynlas said:

Type annex for parent into search and there are  number of threads. I have no idea about the monetary side of things but I believe that it is considered important for the bereaved to be given time to grieve in their own home and community before having to adjust to another life altering change.

Thank you for the search suggestion, it was very helpful! 

trailingspouse

There are lots of other considerations.

What if you and your partner split up? What if your mother meets someone else - early days I know, but it can happen. What if you or your partner dies? What about if/when your mother dies or needs to go in to care and you're left with an annexe and no-one living in it?

ThisIsWeird

Hi AM, and sorry for your loss.

I cannot help with the legal or financial aspects, and  your previouly-discussed plans have possibly gone too far now to easily backtrack on them, but I was going to add to the caution expressed by others above.

My in-law's - at the time in their late 70s, but still active and independent - and us were making tentative plans to buy a place together so that we could keep an eye on them for as long as possible until they needed full time care.

Then dil died, and mil started claiming 'she couldn't stay in their bungalow as she kept seeing him', so we made the decision to move these plans forward and sell her house pretty much right away; she'd move in with us until we found a larger place to share. Big mistake.

Suitable places were hard to find, so 3+ years later she was still here and driving us insane. (I won't go into details, but an 'interesting' personality). Anyhoo, some level of tolerance was found when she added a room to our house so we had separate living areas at least, but the ultimate solution - with her now at 82 - was for her to get her own place, which was a stunning bungalow in the grounds of a nearby care home. 

And if we'd been given a £ for every person who'd given us the same retrospective advice as others above - 'give them time to grieve, and don't make hasty decisions' - it would have covered the cost of the extension. And we'd have saved ourselves a few years of turmoil. And, yes, we:d also been making these tentative plans to all move in together even before dil passed away.

Pleased to say that this bungalow was a good move for mil, too, and not just sanity-preserving for us She had it done up to better-than-new, is insanely house-proud, and it's in the most astonishingly stunning grounds you could imagine. And we now 'get on' together again...

At only 71 (and I do mean 'only'), it seems far too soon to me for you to be considering such life-altering changes. Will you still be ok with this in 10 years time? 15? Even potentially 20? Every plan you may have will now come with this added complication, and for that amount of time. Are you certain that you are happy to stay where you are for this duration, or face the same problems of finding a suitable dual-occupancy property every time you consider a move? 

And, for your mum, is this really the best move for an independent 71-year old? Will it inspire her to seek new interests and new friends, or keep in regular contact with her current friends, inviting them to visit? 

By all means look at her moving closer to you, but please seriously consider making it a separate home, for as long as she is truly independent.

lookstraightahead

So sorry for your loss.

Please think carefully, all of you. My dad is very ill. Before he was ill my mum wanted them to come and live by us (not with us) but as he's got more poorly she's realised that she has a big network around her of people who care a lot (we've realised this too). They're not relatives, they're friends and neighbours. 

She now doesn't want to move, and she's in her eighties. And it also gives me peace of mind that together we can all look after them. I'm an hour away which is nothing really.
71 is really young. Your mum would have to start again with her social life. And what if you want to move? What if she wants to move back?
Personally if she moves I think she should buy her own property so she can change her mind if she wants to.
I know you asked about the legalities, but what if she needed full time care (it's impossible sometimes to care for our loved ones, even if we think we can). You might have to sell the property to fund it.

am123

I appreciate all of the warning stories, I honestly do, but with all respect, it’s not what I’m asking for. I’m looking for financial advice so we can assess things and whether it is a viable step from that aspect. But please - you don’t know me or my family and I didn’t really want to have to go into tons of detail but here we are…

My mum is very isolated where she is because my parents moved to my grandma’s old house five years ago so my dad could build a huge garage for his hobby. Mum didn’t really want to move there but she agreed for my dad’s sake, at least thinking they would have a good ten to fifteen years there together. At the time, my brother lived locally so they had him, however he died suddenly and unexpectedly in his sleep two years ago. My parents were the ones who found him. He had no wife or children so there are no ties there any longer. 

She doesn’t have any kind of social life now. She is completely alone where she is and I would very much like that to change for her. My dad was her best friend, they did absolutely everything together, they always came on holiday with my husband and I, and any female ‘friends’ are really wives of dad’s friends, which is fine, but they are not ‘besties’ by any stretch of the imagination. The one lady she is closer to actually lives much nearer to me, so from that aspect, she would be better off being by us. At least she wouldn’t be stuck in a house by herself 24/7. I live in a small rural city so there would be much more opportunity for her to build a social circle of her own.

Which brings me to the last point. Of course our original thoughts were of them buying somewhere close by, Unfortunately the house prices where I am are substantially more expensive than where she is. She would be lucky to find a one-bedroom flat here for the money her house is worth, and flats (as I have painful experience of) have extra costs such as service charges which now she is on a sole pension, would be a struggle. We cannot move out of the area we live as my husband has to walk to work because there is no staff parking (hospital). There is a very poor public transport service which means it is not an option for him, due to the shifts he works. 

So please understand, it is not something we have not considered from every angle and it’s certainly not something that would be undertaken in a rush.
I just want some help to understand the potential financial/legal implications.