Deprivation of assets vs gifting

dansakman

Elderly couple. Both 90. Failing health though at the moment he is likely to die before she. 

They own their own house worth £450K which they are determined to live in until the end.

He gets full state pension and a civil service pension of about 20K pa but she hardly worked as was the norm in those days and has a small state pension.

He has about 15K savings and she 6K savings. 

Last few years they have started paying for help with the garden, cleaning and have taken on a carer. 

They both have attendance allowance now.

Caring is becoming an issue with their likely to need much more help as they struggle now with any effort and cannot care for each other.  

There are 5 grandchildren and she was going to leave them £1000 on her death - but not mentioned in the will - but has recently started talking about giving the children this money on their birthdays beforehand which will pretty much deplete her savings by February.

Despite the care costs she is determined she wants to pass out a legacy now and keeps trying to write cheques which no one has got or attempted to cash yet and would be quite wary about. 

They haven't considered council care but I'm worried that if these gifts are made that it will be considered deprivation of assets and be a problem if that route becomes necessary.

I seem be considered a source of advice but I don't think I'm qualified and it seems like a complete minefield. Surely you can gift - but how much is too much and how much would be seen as reasonable. 

Any thoughts please? 

 

Grumpy_chap

Assuming they can sell, or accept a charge on, the house to meet care costs this seems reasonable.  The sums involved seem small in the grand scheme of things - less than a month in a care home.
The bigger question might be how day to day expenses will be met if the savings are gifted?

p00hsticks

In her shoes I'd be wary of depleting her savings as she needs to be prepared to be able to survive financially if and when widowed. As she falls under the old scheme she is likely to inherit much if not all of her OH's state pension and I'm not sure what she would get as a widow from the civil service one, but even so she is probably looking at a considerable drop in household income without a corresponding decrease (and more likely an increase) in expenditure. 

Keep_pedalling

They do not appear to be in a position to make generous gifts, being property owners with only £21k in savings to cover emergency repairs is not a good place to be. Nether of them should be gifting cash in their wills to anyone other than each other as the survivor is likely to need it. 

If they currently own the house as joint tenants then severing the tenancy and making new wills leaving each other a life interest in their share is something worth thinking about.

tacpot12

I think I would try to persude her that she should keep much of her own savings in case it takes a while to release his money due to probate. If he leaves the legacies that she wants to leave, then she can feel that she had acheived what she wanted, while still leaving her some safety net and flexibility. 

Doing it this way around eliminates the risk that deprivation of assets is asserted by the council when reviewing her finances. 

If he does die before her, you should also look into her eligibility for Pension Credit, athough any spouse's pension inherited from the Civil Service pension might make her ineligible.