Protect our assets

Daniel54

0779mike said:

I have worked all my life, paid NI and income tax for 50 years and claimed unemployment for just 4 weeks. That is the sum total of state benefits I have had.  We all have to make, I chose to live prudently and save my money.

I want my wife and children to control how my assets are spent not the local authority.

I have had some great advice in this forum in the past but I may have posted my question in the wrong place this time.

You have had the benefit of tax free capital gains on your main residence all your life

i would avoid putting that gain into a trust ,particularly as the sole reason appears to be avoidance of care home fees ,as opposed to IHT mitigation

njkmr

HappyHarry said:

Sorry - why should I be paying for his care in order to make sure his three children get an inheritance? 

Why are you paying for it ?
You may be six foot under by then anyway.?
You, if your a tax payer are contributing now, for your own possible needs in later life, thats what you pay your tax for like Mike has for 50 years, in advance.!
I see people all the time saying why should i pay for them, your not, hes paid his own way all his life.
I guess some people are happy to see all these people choosing not to work as a life style sponging their way through, is that ok ?
Anyway thats all from me on this one. I stand by what i have said.

Tucosalamanca

0779mike said:

I want my wife and children to control how my assets are spent not the local authority.

This isn't what you asked in the original post

0779mike said:

We wish to protect our assets from Care Home fees and leave our assets equally to our 3 children.

With around one million in assets, you and your family are already in control.

Perhaps visiting some local care homes with your wife and children would be beneficial?

Have you talked to your children about it?

The thought of receiving a substantial inheritance after parents had languished in a state funded care home wouldn't sit well with me...

Ganga

If you own two homes as you state in the opening post why not sell one and give the money to your children ,if you do ned care/help later in life then you only have one house that the council/carers will take into consideration.

Linton

0779mike said:

I have worked all my life, paid NI and income tax for 50 years and claimed unemployment for just 4 weeks. That is the sum total of state benefits I have had.  We all have to make, I chose to live prudently and save my money.

I want my wife and children to control how my assets are spent not the local authority.

I have had some great advice in this forum in the past but I may have posted my question in the wrong place this time.

You seem to misunderstand the situation when you are too wealthy to justify the "benefit" of the council paying for your board and lodging in your old age......

The council dont take your money, they merely say that they wont contribute to providing for your needs.  It is no different to you not getting housing benefit or Universal Credit either. If you are paying your own costs is entirely up to you or your PoA to decide what care facilities you want to buy.  If you rely on council funding your choices will be severely limited.  This is particularly true for care in your own home.

RAS

Linton said:

The council dont take your money, they merely say that they wont contribute to providing for your needs.  It is no different to you not getting housing benefit or Universal Credit either. If you are paying your own costs is entirely up to you or your PoA to decide what care facilities you want to buy.  If you rely on council funding your choices will be severely limited.  This is particularly true for care in your own home.

A small illustration from our experience.

Our parent was in receipt of domiciliary care because they couldn't manage themselves and none of us lived nearby. This was LA organised and billed but reimbursed by our parent (effectively self funded). A review indicated addition support was needed and their lovely social worker rang me very excited because a new home was opening and they had beds. 

Knowing our parent didn't want to go into a home, I declined, not least they'd end up hours away from family and we had already decided to relocate them if it happened. I was advised that because the new domiciliary care package was £10pw more than the care home fees, we'd have to organise it directly if we didn't agree to the home. 

Five years later we had to move our parent into a home. The monthly cost of the home we chose, also new, was 8 times as expensive as the one we'd declined, even if it is in an area where the average fee was lower. It wasn't without the odd difficulty with the occasional individual but generally the standard of care and respect was high.

Got any idea of the likely standard of the home we declined?

We'd also rejected several in the area to which we moved our parent as "warehouses" or with low standards but at least we had a choice.

Keep_pedalling

RAS said:

Linton said:

The council dont take your money, they merely say that they wont contribute to providing for your needs.  It is no different to you not getting housing benefit or Universal Credit either. If you are paying your own costs is entirely up to you or your PoA to decide what care facilities you want to buy.  If you rely on council funding your choices will be severely limited.  This is particularly true for care in your own home.

A small illustration from our experience.

Our parent was in receipt of domiciliary care because they couldn't manage themselves and none of us lived nearby. This was LA organised and billed but reimbursed by our parent (effectively self funded). A review indicated addition support was needed and their lovely social worker rang me very excited because a new home was opening and they had beds. 

Knowing our parent didn't want to go into a home, I declined, not least they'd end up hours away from family and we had already decided to relocate them if it happened. I was advised that because the new domiciliary care package was £10pw more than the care home fees, we'd have to organise it directly if we didn't agree to the home. 

Five years later we had to move our parent into a home. The monthly cost of the home we chose, also new, was 8 times as expensive as the one we'd declined, even if it is in an area where the average fee was lower. It wasn't without the odd difficulty with the occasional individual but generally the standard of care and respect was high.

Got any idea of the likely standard of the home we declined?

We'd also rejected several in the area to which we moved our parent as "warehouses" or with low standards but at least we had a choice.

Choice is the key thing here, a choice of when to get care rather than waiting until you state of health gets bad enough to meet the criteria of the funding panel (I have first hand experience of this with my mother), having the choice between residential care or a live in carer (something no LA will provide but something I would choose) and having the choice of a wide range of care homes not one or two LA approved ones. 

The main purpose of building up wealth during your lifetime is to provide comfort and security for your old age, in past times this would have been to stay out of the workhouse now it is to stay out of over my dead body grange care home. I can understand why people of much more modest means are concerned that their children will get nothing if they self fund care but that is not going to happen to those sitting on £1M of assets.

The argument that people have worked hard all their life to build up this wealth is a poor one, the OP’s wealth, like many of us, is more likely to be through unearned gains from house price inflation and inheritances received from previous generations. 

msb1234

chocolatekimmy said:

Following.  

Having seen a grandparent spend nine years in a care home after a stroke in his seventies I don't blame you for looking into this.  His wife joined him for about 18 months.  

After years of working hard (including serving in WW2), paying tax, living modestly and investing wisely virtually all their assets (house, car, caravan) and savings were wiped out by the time they died. 

Thats not what we sign up for, why should people in that position have to lose everything they've worked for all their lives?

Because they want to have a decent end of life maybe? As someone else has already pointed out, why should the tax payers have to supplement the care costs of people with significant assets just so those people’s offspring can get a bigger inheritance? Money the children haven’t earned? 

msb1234

Mike, spend a bit of time researching care homes - what you’d get for a home where residents are partially funded by the Local Authority and one where residents are self funding can be worlds apart. For a vulnerable elderly person in need of good end of life care, I know what I’d rather have. 

As your properties are held as tenants in common, then for the first of you that may need care, your main residence won’t be taken into account as a sale forced, but as you own 2 properties, the LA may well expect the one you don’t live in to be sold in order to fund care. And quite rightly so. 

msb1234

0779mike said:

I have worked all my life, paid NI and income tax for 50 years and claimed unemployment for just 4 weeks. That is the sum total of state benefits I have had.  We all have to make, I chose to live prudently and save my money.

I want my wife and children to control how my assets are spent not the local authority.

I have had some great advice in this forum in the past but I may have posted my question in the wrong place this time.

Maybe you would have been wiser to live life to the full! Eat, drink and be merry, as a shroud has no pockets!!!