Bank account for monies relating to care home fees and third party top up

Flakie

Good morning. My FIL died during lockdown and MIL went into a care home due to her dementia. Their property was sold and because they were tenants in common half the proceeds went into mums name and half into an executors account for the benefit of my husband and his brother and sister whilst everything was sorted out. All three children had to agree to what was done with it. The time has come where mums money is about to hit the lower threshold and talks have begun for her assessment for funding. It might be that a top up is needed as we all want her to stay where she is. The money in the exec account is still there in its entirety as the three children all agreed that it should be left intact should mum need it. I won’t go into the reason as to why it is still there. If a top up is required can anyone suggest the best way to invest this money so that access to it is easy for transfers for the care home payments. Currently my husband has the online banking for mums current account and deals with paying the bills etc. Many thanks for reading. 

Keep_pedalling

I would split it into a number of accounts. An easy access account with enough in it to last the first year a one year fixed bond to cover the following year and longer term bonds for on going years.

The tricky issue is that you can’t keep theses within FIL’s estate or your MIL’s name, so the executors need to distribute the funds between the three siblings.

How long ago did FIL die? 

tacpot12

I think you are going to struggle as the money is in a Trust for the three children. I suspect that the best way to deal with this is for the executors to distrubute the money to the three children (it's too late to do a Deed of Variation to give it to your MIL), and for each of them to invest it seperately, and then open a joint bank account for the three of you as an account you can transfer the money into to pay the fees. (TSB allows joint accounts to have more than two people named on the account.)

Investment firms such as AJ Bell allow 'family linking' of investment accounts (including ISAs), so that if there is one of the children that wants to take a lead on investing the money, you can arrange for them to have 'Dealing' access to the the other's money so that they can coordinate the investment on behalf of the family.

 

Albermarle

Be aware that investing and saving are not the same things ( not in financial lingo anyway).

Investing typically means  for example investing in the stock market/investment funds. This is best for money not needed for some years ( minimum 5 years, ideally 10 years or more) During the time it is invested the value can go up and down of course.

Saving means saving in a safe savings account for a a set rate of interest. This is better for money that could be needed in the next few years, which sounds to be the case in this situation.

You can of course have a mixture of savings and investments.

Flakie

Keep_pedalling said:

I would split it into a number of accounts. An easy access account with enough in it to last the first year a one year fixed bond to cover the following year and longer term bonds for on going years.

The tricky issue is that you can’t keep theses within FIL’s estate or your MIL’s name, so the executors need to distribute the funds between the three siblings.

How long ago did FIL die? 

4 and a half years ago