Deceased fathers care home fees

Missingdad75

Hi thanks for listening and possibly advising. 

My dad went into a care home on a temporary basis on 27th December 2022 and was only made permanent on 1st December 2023. He sadly passed away on 9th December.

Financial Assessment Team are only now undertaking a financial assessment. He has just over the threshold of £23250 in savings and a flat worth £65k approx. After a lot of reading up I have a couple of queries:

Can they still take his flat into consideration as over the upper limit threshold even though it should be disregarded as under 12 weeks permanent stay? 

When Dad was in the care home he needed clothes, sanitary wear etc from scratch as I had no idea he had been so unwell for so long and had no clothes without holes in (didn't see him for 7 years as he was quite violent towards me), Lloyd's were great as I had no POA and issued me a trusted person card to enable me to get him everything as couldnt afford it out of my own pocket. However the form says I should have evidence of purchases but at no time did they tell me I couldn't use his money as new to this. Will they take this as deprivation of assets as I was only doing what I thought was right by Dad?

lisyloo

No they will not take personal purchases as deprivation of assets.
Bank statements, credit card statements are proof of purchase.
So if you say spent £200 on clothes at Mark & Spencers then that should be fine or sanitary ware at boots/pharmacy/supermarket.
If you've spent £10K down the betting shop then obviously they are going to question it.
If you have genuinely bought him normal things at normal prices in normal shops then you should have no worries but do expect to provide your statements and cross reference cash transfers with shop purchases on a bank/credit card statement.
If it was me I'd start putting that together in an excel spreadsheet cross referenceing any cash withdrawals from his account to the relevant purchases on your bank/credit card statements.

lisyloo

Property disregards

Your share in the value of your former home can be disregarded, for example, if your partner still lives there or, in certain circumstances, a relative. If your home is included in the financial assessment, its value is disregarded for the first 12 weeks after a permanent care home placement. This is to give you time to make a decision about your property in relation to paying care fees. For example, you might enter into a deferred payment agreement with the local authority. Note Personal possessions are disregarded as long as they were not bought with the intention of avoiding care charges.

Paying for permanent residential care (ageuk.org.uk)

I took this from page 8

MobileSaver

Missingdad75 said:

issued me a trusted person card to enable me to get him everything as couldnt afford it out of my own pocket. However the form says I should have evidence of purchases

What sort of amounts are we talking? If you were spending/withdrawing a hundred pounds or so a week then you've nothing to worry about. If you were spending four figures a month then obviously questions are going to be asked.