Joint account with elderly parent - who owns what for financial assessment?

rubyhettybetty

My friend's mum has been diagnosed with dementia and has gone straight from hospital into a home. She is unable to live independently and wants to stay in the home; the fees are about £900 a week.
There is a joint account between the elderly mum and her daughter (my friend) with £33k of cash - my friend had let this accumulate beyond the upper capital limit on the basis that she assumed it would be a 50:50 jointly owned asset for assessment purposes - however, the only deposits over 9 years have been the mum's pensions. 
Now the financial assessment is due in a week or so, I don't think they will treat that asset as being jointly owned? In reality it would all belong to the mother?
Obviously if it is deemed to be an asset and she has to fully self fund, it won't be long till she uses up the excess and need another financial assessment.

Anyone know anything about this?

HillStreetBlues

rubyhettybetty said:

My friend's mum has been diagnosed with dementia and has gone straight from hospital into a home. She is unable to live independently and wants to stay in the home; the fees are about £900 a week.
There is a joint account between the elderly mum and her daughter (my friend) with £33k of cash - my friend had let this accumulate beyond the upper capital limit on the basis that she assumed it would be a 50:50 jointly owned asset for assessment purposes - however, the only deposits over 9 years have been the mum's pensions. 
Now the financial assessment is due in a week or so, I don't think they will treat that asset as being jointly owned? In reality it would all belong to the mother?
Obviously if it is deemed to be an asset and she has to fully self fund, it won't be long till she uses up the excess and need another financial assessment.

Anyone know anything about this?

Has the daughter been paying for anything in those 9 years to do with her mother?

Brie

When the council did an assessment re MiL they looked at the total amount in the joint account she had with my OH and used 50% as belonging to MiL.  If daughter can prove that more than 50% is hers then they should take that into account.

rubyhettybetty

HillStreetBlues said:

rubyhettybetty said:

My friend's mum has been diagnosed with dementia and has gone straight from hospital into a home. She is unable to live independently and wants to stay in the home; the fees are about £900 a week.
There is a joint account between the elderly mum and her daughter (my friend) with £33k of cash - my friend had let this accumulate beyond the upper capital limit on the basis that she assumed it would be a 50:50 jointly owned asset for assessment purposes - however, the only deposits over 9 years have been the mum's pensions. 
Now the financial assessment is due in a week or so, I don't think they will treat that asset as being jointly owned? In reality it would all belong to the mother?
Obviously if it is deemed to be an asset and she has to fully self fund, it won't be long till she uses up the excess and need another financial assessment.

Anyone know anything about this?

Has the daughter been paying for anything in those 9 years to do with her mother?

She accesses the account to withdraw money etc to pay for her mums shopping and clothes and bits, she doesn't pay her own money in

rubyhettybetty

Brie said:

When the council did an assessment re MiL they looked at the total amount in the joint account she had with my OH and used 50% as belonging to MiL.  If daughter can prove that more than 50% is hers then they should take that into account.

Did he ever pay any money in?

HillStreetBlues

rubyhettybetty said:

HillStreetBlues said:

rubyhettybetty said:

My friend's mum has been diagnosed with dementia and has gone straight from hospital into a home. She is unable to live independently and wants to stay in the home; the fees are about £900 a week.
There is a joint account between the elderly mum and her daughter (my friend) with £33k of cash - my friend had let this accumulate beyond the upper capital limit on the basis that she assumed it would be a 50:50 jointly owned asset for assessment purposes - however, the only deposits over 9 years have been the mum's pensions. 
Now the financial assessment is due in a week or so, I don't think they will treat that asset as being jointly owned? In reality it would all belong to the mother?
Obviously if it is deemed to be an asset and she has to fully self fund, it won't be long till she uses up the excess and need another financial assessment.

Anyone know anything about this?

Has the daughter been paying for anything in those 9 years to do with her mother?

She accesses the account to withdraw money etc to pay for her mums shopping and clothes and bits, she doesn't pay her own money in

Then it does sound like all the money is the mother's despite being in the joint account.

I expect the council will go after the full total as it's clearly not equally divided.

Brie

rubyhettybetty said:

Brie said:

When the council did an assessment re MiL they looked at the total amount in the joint account she had with my OH and used 50% as belonging to MiL.  If daughter can prove that more than 50% is hers then they should take that into account.

Did he ever pay any money in?

Nope.  Never did.  It was MiL's money being paid in - obvious from the fact that it was pensions and attendance allowance.  OH took money out to pay for stuff, groceries, buy her things etc. 

But the assumption from the council was that as it was joint it was 50% each.  There was 2 accounts like that - one we explained was a small account with money set aside by MiL for her funeral expenses.  The other was the active account.  But both were 50/50. 

Unlike her other account at a different bank that I had 3rd party authority on - that was understandably considered all hers, it's just that I had been given access by the bank so I could deal with things on MiL's behalf.  

What I do suggest you/sis doesn't do is try to move a chunk of money out to get it to the £22k limit.  That would look suspicious and will definitely mean questions will be asked.  Our council wanted 6 months worth of bank statements for all accounts plus asked about other transactions going back years.  It was obvious from the way we were running her accounts that she was paying us for her "rent" and extras as she'd been living with us for a few years.  And they were fine with that.

Brie

fyi - just wanted to add that while there was no intention to defraud or whatever all I did on answering the financial assessment was to answer the questions asked.  I didn't go into any further details and didn't volunteer things but as said previously - OH is not of pensionable age so it would have been obvious that pension money going into her/their account couldn't be his.  Also he got carer's allowance (paid to our account not theirs) and she got attendance allowance.  As I recall that was all outlined in the assessment in any case.  

TELLIT01

If the only deposits to the account over the past 9 years have been the mother's pension there is an argument that it should all be counted as her money.  However, there are rules on how joint assets should be treated so it's possible only half will be taken into account.

elsien

Something else your friend and her mother need to consider is what happens when she is no longer able to self-fund.

If she has gone straight from hospital to a care home, sometimes people are discharged to a nursing home for assessment but they don't need nursing care, they may just need residential. A dementia diagnosis in and of itself doesn't mean the person has any nursing needs. 

Depending on the area where she lives, if the standard local authority residential rate is (for example) £400 a week and there is no-one able to pay any top-up then it is very likely that your friend's mother may need to move somewhere cheaper - at £900 a week she is going to hit the 23.5K limit very quickly and the local authority are not going to be paying several hundred pounds extra a week themselves if there is an appropriate cheaper local option that is also able to meet her needs. 
It's a question she really needs to ask before mum gets too settled. 

While her mother is self-funding, make sure she gets attendance allowance if not doing so already. 

born_again

This is a nice to know point. Or a reality check. 🤷‍♀️

OP's situation shows that this is a pitfall of going the easy route when parent or such, gets to the point of not being able to manage life in the way they used to do & needs help. Rather than getting power of attorney to be able to administer their accounts. 

This would also work against anyone should they need to claim any means tested benefits as well.