Dementia Care - Selling home

Whittard2025

Hi,
Apologies if this is in the wrong category.

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping someone here might be able to offer advice or share their experience.

My mum has been diagnosed with dementia and now needs full-time care. Unfortunately, her home isn’t in a trust or anything similar, and it looks like I’ll need to sell it to cover the cost of her care. This is a really emotional and difficult step for me, and I’m just trying to understand what options, if any, I might still have.

I’m not trying to avoid paying for the care she needs, but I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do to protect some of her assets or if I’m missing any legal or financial options that could help.

Has anyone been through something similar or could point me in the direction of support or guidance?

Thanks in advance – any help would be truly appreciated.

p00hsticks

I think at this point it will probably be too late to do anything in relation to the house. 

Do you have Power Of Attorney ?
If so then you have to act in her best interests, which means that you can't divert funds away from her. 
If you don't then assuming she no longer has capacity you would need to make an application to the Court of Protection for authority to sell the house.   

I think your best hope would be to see if she qualifies for NHS Continuing Heathcare funding, which I understand is difficult to get, but would mean that the NHS would fund her care. 

Also if she is self funding, ensure she applies for Attendance Allowance. 

Savvy_Sue

All of the above, plus ...

Was anyone else still living with her when she moved to residential care? If yes, who was it and are they over 60? 

Also, if it makes you feel better, having the home in a trust might not have achieved what you seem to hope, and might have made selling it and using that money to support her needs a lot more difficult. 

You want the best for your mum. You want her to have choices about where she lives (or if that's not possible, you want to have choices about where she lives). Having her own home to sell makes choice possible. 

tetrarch

Very sorry to hear that you've arrived into a very sad, but not uncommon situation

You mention care but haven't specified whether you are talking about care at home or residential care. The likelihood is that, over time, the former will become the latter.

The financial advice is very dependent on the answer to p00hsticks' question

The guidance for non-financial help is somewhat dependent on the same, but also the type of care that your Mum needs

Regards

Tet

Keep_pedalling

Do you have any idea of the value of her home and the level of savings she has? 

One possibility, if there are sufficient funds, is to purchase an immediate needs annuity. This involves a one off cost but guarantees to fund care for as long as she lives. 

As above do you have power of attorney for her? If not you are going to have to apply for deputyship which unfortunately is quite a long winded process and has some significant fees attached. 

elsien

Presuming there is no reason for the property to be disregarded, just putting this on the table, but not a recommendation. Some people consider renting the property out.

However, there are a lot of caveats to that. Area and demand. Obviously someone would need power of attorney. Then there is all the expense of bringing the property up to scratch, and the emotional impact of having to treat it as a business not the family home. Plus the hassle of being a landlord and whether it’s financially worth it if you get dodgy tenants that you take months to evict, particularly if the changes to the legislation come in. 

Albermarle

 Unfortunately, her home isn’t in a trust or anything similar, and it looks like I’ll need to sell it to cover the cost of her care

The local authority can ignore any trust status, if they think it has been done deliberately to avoid care fees.
Many of these trust schemes only benefit the lawyers fees for setting them up.

To put a positive slant on the situation, if she can pay for her own care at least she has choices rather than being at the mercy of the local authority.

Spendless

My mum had POA for my Nan who went into a care home due to dementia. Mum puchased a funeral plan on her behalf. This didnt count as DOA. Nan died 8 years later at almost  99 and though the majority of the money from the sale of her home had gone paying for her care, the plan paid for the majority of the funeral.costs (there were still some things it didnt cover such as a wake). It meant that the bit she did leave was able to be shared between the beneficaries her will without all the funeral costs being deducted from what was left of her estate. 

Grey_Critic

Have you spoken with any specialist care- Admiral Nurses for example. have a look here www.carerscount.org.uk if you are not already in touch with someone. They will be able to help.

The above have assisted me. My Doctor has/is being very helpful with arranging for personalised care/support for me/