Reducing savings to avoid paying for care.

Mickaroon4

My Mother is currently housebound and has 2 carers 4 times a day. This is rapidly reducing her savings. 

I understand that she can’t give her savings away or suddenly by cars or jewellery etc, and the council will see this as fraud.
However her kitchen and bathroom have not been updated in many years and now need replacing. 

Would this be classed as fraud to reduce her savings to less than £23000, or a necessity for the property. 

Mark_d

This is not routine maintenance or adjustments.  Replacing kitchen and bathroom has not instantly become a necessity.  I believe this would be seen as a clear case of deprivation of assets.

Mickaroon4

Hi
just to confirm, both the kitchen and bathroom have not been updated for almost 50 years. The kitchen is still being used to prepare meals and bathroom still has lead piping. Could this not be classed as essential maintenance ?

Brie

Well if there's lead piping and water going through that is being used for drinking at all I'd say that's essential.  It might also be highly disruptive as replacing piping can't be done in an afternoon (as far as I'm aware).  Think our bathroom refit took 5 days in total and that was just doing visible things like replacing a tub with a shower etc.  

Also thinking about this if mom is at home does she use a bathtub?  Maybe she should have a walk in shower instead.  Again that would be a completely legitimate use of savings as it was be safer for her.  But it also might be something that the council might help fund.  

As for the kitchen - updating the electrics would be safer for her perhaps.  Having more outlets available might help.  New fridge if the one there now is old, seals cracking and hard to clear of mould?  Again - we had a kitchen refit that cost over £15k but that was ripping the whole thing out and getting all new appliances.  

And new washing machine?  My MiL needed her linen cleaned much more than normal and our machine wasn't up to the task.  

p00hsticks

Mickaroon4 said:

My Mother is currently housebound and has 2 carers 4 times a day. This is rapidly reducing her savings. 

I understand that she can’t give her savings away or suddenly by cars or jewellery etc, and the council will see this as fraud.
However her kitchen and bathroom have not been updated in many years and now need replacing. 

Would this be classed as fraud to reduce her savings to less than £23000, or a necessity for the property. 

Who owns the house ? Who lives with her ?
If she owns it and is living there by herself then I think the value of the property would also be taken into consideration if she needed to go into care....
If she doesn't own it then spending money on updating the house wouldn't make sense....

FlorayG

Why do you want to reduce her savings so that she doesn't have to pay for care? Does your MOTHER want a new kitchen and bathroom? If she has carers in 4x day I don't think she has much use for a kitchen herself although the improved bathroom would be reasonable. Let her pay for her care; when the money is gone it's gone. It's her money

Albermarle

Although you can maybe justify some of the expenditure, I can guess that the LA will take a dim view of it regardless, if you ask that they start paying for her care. 
The rules about deprivation of assets can be a bit of a grey area and each LA will have their own view.

tacpot12

Mickaroon4 said:

Hi
just to confirm, both the kitchen and bathroom have not been updated for almost 50 years. The kitchen is still being used to prepare meals and bathroom still has lead piping. Could this not be classed as essential maintenance ?

If it was essential it would have been done before now. 

Arthurian

I don't know how your council would react to this situation - personally, I'd let you update.  Maybe get a tradesman to condemn the state of the kitchen and bathroom in writing, so you have a sort of expert witness on your side before checking with the council.  Severn Trent Water (maybe other water companies?) have a lead replacement scheme which might help https://www.stwater.co.uk/my-supply/tap-water/my-water-pipes/lead-replacement-scheme

pollypenny

I would want to use my saving to pay for the best possible care, whether for my husband or for myself. 

Sounds as if you want the council tax payers in your area to pay for your mother's care. 

Newly_retired

We're not really talking about fraud as such, but deprivation of assets with the deliberate intent to avoid paying for care costs. Doing what you propose is obviously deliberate, even if justifiable.
It sounds as if your mother does not have a huge amount of savings above the £23k threshold. So making improvements may only hold back for a short time the need to ask the Local Authority to step in for care costs. How far off needing a care home is she? In other words, is it worth doing the improvements?