Alzheimer's Diagnosis and Junior ISA payments

overload99

My mother-in-law set up regular payments into Junior ISAs for her grandchildren about 10 years ago as a university fund. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's about 6 months ago and is now in a care home. Her daughter, who has LPA, has been told that these payments now need to stop. Is this correct? I would have thought that stopping the payments is actively going against her wishes (which were made when she still had mental capacity). I don't know if it makes a difference but she has quite a sizeable estate and the ISA payments are £250/month. Thanks in advance.

elsien

The power of attorney needs to look at the OPG guidance on gift giving and make a decision based on that.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/giving-gifts/giving-gifts-web-version

Her wishes when she had capacity are certainly part of it but not necessarily the full story because people circumstances do change and if they have capacity their wishes and actions may also change because of that

I would ask though, who has told her this?

Keep_pedalling

Strictly speaking the advice is correct, an attorney only has the authority to act in the best interests of the donor which is not the same thing as the donors wishes. Going into residential care means her annal expenditure is going to increase significantly so less room for gifting even if she was still able to make the decision herself.

You would be possible to carry on an established gifting pattern if a) it is not going to lead to her losing the ability to fund her care for the foreseeable future and b) there are no beneficiaries of her who are going to lose out.

elsien

I don’t see where beneficiaries come into this at all? If the LPA carries on gifting, stays within the rules and any beneficiaries in the future don’t like it, that’s their tough luck. You don’t make decisions about best interest based on what may or may not be in a will.

Cubicsrube

Faced a very similar situation - it was tricky. Established pattern of monthly giving to one set of grandchildren but not the other (who came along later); then move into care and savings started to deplete rapidly albeit from a healthy starting number. Question of whether/when to reduce or stop the giving came up; we siblings definitely felt a little conflict in this thanks to our overlapping roles as children, parents, executors and LPAs.
In our case we modeled the speed at which the assets were going to deplete based on the care home hiking the rates (twice in the first year) and researched what would happen if the funds ran out and/or mum's needs grew. We made the decision to stop the giving.

Keep_pedalling

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82115771#Comment_82115771

It can be problematic, for instance if the donor had another child who had no children they could be miffed at not only only seeing a good chunk of their inheritance going on care costs but the nibblings gifting also reducing their inheritance. It is not unknown for this to cause problems for the attorney when the disgruntled child complains the the OPG.