Deceased persons care home fees.

Keep_pedalling

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82140128#Comment_82140128

In which case some of those should have gone towards her care, At the point she was given £20k there would have been deemed income of £1 per week for every £250 over £14,250 she held in savings.

chrissy_22

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82140156#Comment_82140156

To be honest I don't think it would have even occurred to her to let someone know about it. She may not have realised she needed to pay any fees at all.I think she was moved to the place following a stint in the psychiatric unit, I assume she was in the unit under section I don't know if it would've been voluntary or not..

chrissy_22

She must've realsied she had to pay it as she paid some.

elsien

whether she realised she had to pay it or not is academic. If the money was due from her estate, and there was nothing in the estate, and there is evidence that the house was disregarded then the husband needs to write back and basically say not me Squire. And if you believe otherwise, then prove it.

Her benefits were her responsibility. And if the care home or social services had queries around her financial capacity, they should’ve done something about it at the time.
I would suggest saying to them that the house was disregarded she managed her own money, she lived on benefits and there was nothing in the estate when she died given that the house did not count.

although they may argue that as they were still married, they may have been some other married assets to take into account. Ask for a copy of the original financial assessment if he hasn’t still got a copy.

Keep_pedalling

The house will have been disregarded in any financial assessment, but if she should have been paying from other sources and failed to do so then this is a debt owed by the estate just like any other debt built up by an estate.. Had the property been held as Joint Tenants then the house would have passed by survivorship and the estate would be insolvent.

doodling

Hi,

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82140212#Comment_82140212

Does it work like that? In this case, I speculate that the house was disregarded and that the deceased was asked to pay some or all of their benefits to help fund their care. If they then didn't do that then that is a debt quite separate to the care cost assessment and I would further speculate that it can be recovered from her estate.

I'm definitely not an expert in this but it is a different scenario to the usual "is the value of a house owned with a spouse included in an assessment?" question.

doodling

Hi,

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82140186#Comment_82140186

How long was she sectioned for - if it was for more than 28 days then there is a question as to whether she should have had to pay anything at all for her care.

doodling

Hi,

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82140099#Comment_82140099

The executor should have identified and paid any debts due before distributing the estate (which includes transferring the half owned by the wife to the husband). Probate is simply a mandate for the executor to do that.

Given the likely equity in the house then there were enough assets in the wife's estate to pay the debt (albeit the husband would have had to "buy" a proportion of the house rather inheriting it).

Even if some kind of retrospective ToLaTA case was attempted which argued that the wife's ownership was less than 50% because she didn't stick to the implied basis on which the house was bought it feels unlikely that her share could be argued to be less than a share equivalent to the debt that is being claimed so arguably her estate was solvent when she died.

I suspect the only issues here are the statute of limitation question about what debts can be claimed and the interpretation of the house disregard in this case.

elsien

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82140248#Comment_82140248

If the local authority are chasing for the money, then she clearly wasn’t been funded by 117 after-care. And that’s not something you can really argue in retrospect.

chrissy_22

Thanks everyone.

So to summarise he does owe them money and the only thing he can do, is reduce the amount due to statute barring? What's the process for getting some disregarded due to that?

Is it worth him replying to them saying he doesn't acknowledge the debt due to not recognising the name (Surname spelt wrong on the letter) purely to stall them so he has more time to work it out. The letter says pay in 21 days or set up a repayment plan it was dated 9th Sept but he didn't receive it until the 15th.

Thanks again all. :0)