Selling a house due to care home married couple

Jacksonc2114

Looking for some possible advice or where we can turn

dad has dementia and recently moved to care home…  we have now separated their finances ( own bank accounts with a 50/50 split of their money )  and mum has got her pension credit guarantee sorted and dad now pays £200 a week for care fees following financial assessments … dad is no longer able to make any decisions due to the advanced dementia 

I have a LPA for Finacial and Heath over dad and in process of getting one for mum for future but she has full mental capacity at present 

what we struggle to find or understand  is if we sell the house my parents are in does  the money become 50/50 and then dad will have this £25/30k in his bank that would go to care payments and trigger a new financial assessment and mum will get her 25/30 in bank … from this can the money from the sale go to mum to help her set up a smaller safer home … mum wants to move to a retirement home where she has her own self contained flat and support if needed as she gets older .. mum is 78 and dad is 80 … she is I believe entitled to housing benefit due to her pension credit guarantee element 

any guidance or pointers of where to start looking and reading would be appreciated 

elsien

You probably need to get proper advice about this from the age uk helpline or similar.

My layperson’s understanding is that the local authority should use their discretion  to disregard any of the money used from your dad’s share of the sale to buy the smaller property but any money  left over from his half after that would count towards the financial assessment. 

ETA - see p8 on here which says similar.
https://housingcare.org/downloads/kbase/3091.pdf

Obviously her share of the remaining money would be taken into account with regards to income related benefits.

Keep_pedalling

Is their current house only worth between £50-60,000 or is that a typo? 

Your mother is allowed to downsize using the proceeds of the current house sale, but 50% of any equity released will belong to your father and may trigger the need for a new financial assessment. 

Jacksonc2114

Keep_pedalling said:

Is their current house only worth between £50-60,000 or is that a typo? 

Your mother is allowed to downsize using the proceeds of the current house sale, but 50% of any equity released will belong to your father and may trigger the need for a new financial assessment. 

No that’s the case they will be lucky to get £50k the area they live in isn’t a good area and the house is so old it needs work no central heating etc  .. the area is also mainly now rental so it would be sold rather quick .. one of the reasons we want her out of the house and into a retirement place is the safety due to the decline in the area :-( 

Altior

If capital is released from the property, will it impact means tested benefits.

Jacksonc2114

Altior said:

If capital is released from the property, will it impact means tested benefits.

We’ve done a calculator and as she is pension credit guaranteed element even with £40k in savings she’s still entitled to full housing benefit but her pension goes down £200 a week and that’s based on her selling house and any other savings so we know housing benefit is ok to get still for her 

jonnydeppiwish!

Why are you selling the house though? If your mum is living there then I’m pretty sure the house cannot be touched.

Jacksonc2114

jonnydeppiwish! said:

Why are you selling the house though? If your mum is living there then I’m pretty sure the house cannot be touched.

Because the house is in poor condition has no central heating and is in an area that is currently full of drug addicts and constant police at the street … she feels unsafe in her home at present and she is 78 and we feel retirement or supported living is better for her