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Deceased persons care home fees.
Hi,
This is quite complicated….
My friends wife took her own life in March 2021. They had been separated for over 25 years but any attempts to get her to attend mediation to start divorce proceedings were unsuccessful due to her poor mental health. She moved into residential care in 2016 due to her MH.
She was tenant in common with her husband but obviously made no financial contribution towards the family home and he brought up the children as a single parent in the family home. He also gave her a lump sum on maturity of an endowment policy and paid the shortfall on the mortgage (£110,000) from his savings.
My friend has just received a letter from the council saying he's liable for all care fees from June 2016, the last payment she made appears to be in October 2017.
They have invoiced for fee's after she had died. She died in March and there's an invoice for May and June on the statement, they have spelt her name incorrectly on the letter he has received (although it's correct on the statement). It also says on the letter that her interest in the property was disregarded when the authority made a financial assessment under the care Act 2014 and she was required to contribute from her own income which was solely benefits. The letter says they might review the original assessment which will increase the debt for some reason.
When she died she had no assets or a will so my friend assumed that all he needed to do was put the house into his name so didn't apply for probate. Intermeddling is mentioned on the letter.
I have told him not to acknowledge the debt at the moment, which is £20k.
As far as I can work out the full amount will be statute barred in March 2027 (six years after her death) but 9 years after she 1st got into arrears.
To start with, this is the first time he's heard about debts owed, as she last paid in 2017 has the statute passed for any claims prior to 2020? If so and they can't collect that, this will reduce the amount owed to about £3k which he'll probably just pay. If he was liable for any care home fee's when she stopped paying surely they should've contacted him then and why didn't they start proceedings to take her to court for the debt does that have any bearing on his liability to pay?
I hope this all makes sense, thanks in advance for any help.
Comments
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The family home is always disregarded where a spouse is living in it, the complication here is that if she died owing fees, then they need to be paid from her estate which was not insolvent when she died as she owned a share of the house (presumably 50% if no deed of trust was put in place).
If she had no assets then she should not have been self funding.
4 -
Yes it was 50%. So are you saying that she had assests somewhere as she had to contribute from her benefits?
1 -
What happened to the contents of her bank accounts when she died? What happened to the lump sum from the matured endowment? The fees may have needed to be paid from these.
2 -
She spent the endowment very soon after she received it in 2018 . She was an alcoholic along with her mental health and physical care needs, so safe to say she wasn't any good at budgeting.
Her bank account had £100 in when she died that her dad had given her the day before. That was given to their children.1 -
Hi,
I think the argument is that the OP failed in his job as executor / personal representative in not paying the deceased's debts from the estate (which included half a house) when she died.
As others have said, the expectation would be that the house is disregarded when assessing care fees if a spouse is living in it. If they are not doing that then it be good to understand why - at this stage it does sound like they are disregarding the house so that is good.
What level of contribution was expected from her benefits (presumably it was not more than those benefits) - if this wasn't paid where did the benefit money go? It sounds like it is possible that the claim is for an amount of contribution from benefits which should have been paid but wasn't - if that is the case then the claim against the estate could be reasonable.
What was the value of the estate (including the half house the deceased owned, taking any mortgage into account), when she died?
How much of a hardship will it be for the husband to find the money?
2 -
Forgive me I know nothing about probate, would that have ascertained that she had outstanding debt to the council if no one has been informed?
House is probably £350k. She had all the money from the endowment but my friend paid off the mortgage with an ISA he put money into as he new the endowment wouldn't cover it. so it was mortgage free when she died.
At a rough guess I'd imagine her benefit money went mostly to the local off licence. If she stopped paying fee's in 2017 why didn't they contact him or remove the direct payment to her so the fees would be taken from it before it got to her.
My friends retired, I don't think he has £20k laying around but I could be wrong.. But that goes back to the other question of whether the debts that accrued from 2017 to 2020 should be statute barred?
1 -
Not quite, if she should have contributing to her care costs through income and or savings but failed to do so because she spent it all on drink then her estate owes that money to the LA. I would however question whether any financial assessment was done once her saving fell to the level at which you no longer have to fully self fund. It sounds like she had no one to keep an eye on her finances so that was never picked up on.
What is the amount they say is owing?
2 -
She didn't have any savings aside from the 2 x £10k payments from the endowment (which swiftly went).
They say over £20k from 2017 - 2021, including 2 bills after she'd died. I'm just not sure who could've kept an eye on her finances as they were estranged and she wouldn't have let her kids deal with it.1 -
That is a quite small bill for 4 years. Even where someone is being fully funded they are expected to contribute from their earnings. Presumably she was on some form of benefits during that time?
2 -
Yes benefits were her sole income.
1
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