It's an inheritence one...

We can't have a legal agreement with my parents
Why not?

@InheritenceArguments my advice as the equivalent of your sibling is please please get legal advice and a formal agreement in place.. Your parents should also get independent legal advice. The legal agreement needs to cover life events, which can be a shock e.g. death or disability of you or your DH.

The fact you consider your parents will have an “unofficial” lifetime interest raises red flags. Your parents will have some legal rights much better to have them in an agreement than sort it out when there is a problem.

Make sure you have PoAs in place.

Local Authorities are absolutely broke and are looking very very closely at anything that is deprivation of assets. I cannot see how you would avoid this if your parents need to go in a care home and use up their money.

Ultimately, it's up to your parents what they decide to do with their money after they're gone. Discuss with your parents about writing a will & ask them to relay their wishes to furious sibling so they know your parents wishes while they're still alive then there's no confusion when the time comes for wills to be executed & inheritance is dished out.

My mum spent a considerable chunk of her assets building an annexe in our garden. Not sure what effect it has had on our property value (it is only useful if any potential buyer needs it), but my siblings are happy that we benefit from any increase in value, as we’re the only ones who would have mum living in the garden!

Edited to delete as posted too soon

that's kind of right....you don't have to repay the money but any amount that they decide falls under deliberate deprivation is added to the calculation of how much money your parents have and therefore bumps up the amount of money they will need not to have before social services contribute to care...so from what you have said it looks possible that SS will never contribute to care costs. Its possible that your parents are very ever so rich and therefore this won't ever be an issue but as @Cassiemum says, you should take it into account.

What you wrote would make sense, if the arrangement was for the Op to provide care. But in her owns words ( please read the posts ) she won’t, and that’s understandable as it’s very hard work.
if they need care they will have to hire a live in carer, so all this arrangement is , is the parents paying for an annexe which Op owns and hence her sibling isn’t happy

That’s only a factor for state care. They have other assets so they will have to pay for private care.

Hmmm be very careful regarding them putting money in your house if they already have health needs that will at some point need professional help in a care setting. What most legal advisers get wrong is that once someone becomes ill with a condition that will need care, from that point any ‘gifting’ of their assets can be deemed deprivation of capital for Adult Social Care purposes. The fact that you are not having them as part owners does not protect you but can be seen as further deprivation and fraud. You could still be expected to repay what they have invested in your property or the financial assessment to determine what needs to be paid towards care fees will take into account your parents still have the money they gave you! So you will have to pay the care fees which are on average £1000 a week now. I work in this area and due to public funding issues councils are less likely to allow such deprivation of capital.

Oh please.

Have a discussion now. Give your siblings options.

Mum and Dad can spend £2K a week on care home fees, or they can move in with you.

I work in a care home where weekly fees are £1800 per person. (No typo)

Work out the basic cost of rent for rooms in your area.

You can add in escort fees for hospital appointments, which are typically £18 per hour plus travel costs.

And feeding/heating your parents.

And will the siblings contribute to the cost of carers?

Ask them what they want to do, once the parents fees hypothetically reach whatever contribution your parents are making to the house???

Please value the amount of care - and commerical cost of that care. As well as the extra physical cost of your parents living with you.

Then be very brutal with your siblings. What will they contributing to the support of your parents?

I understand it's not about the money for you.

But it is all about the money for your siblings.

So work out a spreadsheet right now. And agree reasonable costs for your parents alongside benefits of your parents investing in your home.

And what financial contributions your siblings were planning on making to their care.

Your parents might live 5 years or they might live 20 years.

Your parents might live with you until death or their needs might become too complex and you need to move them into a home.

But involve your siblings into the reality of costs for your parents.

And have the financial facts to hand, and give people time to mull over the facts.

Ultiumately it all depends on when your parents die.

But put down an average life expectancy of 86 - and potential costs up to that age, and than potential costs past that age.

The families of anyone paying for a care home, have a very limited and dwindling opportunity for an inheritance. So do your basic sums and present that to your siblings.

The siblings who are objecting are perfectly within their rights to step up and do it instead, she's not stopping them. But they're not willing to upend their lives to support an elderly parent.

They might be prepared to upend their life. The Op says her parents chose to move near her, and there's no indication that the siblings have been asked at all if they would do it, and definitely nothing that says they have refused.

They might have been delighted if they had chosen to move near them, and happy to do all the caring including personal care without getting a better house into the bargain. We can't tell.

And secondly the upending would be far greater for them, because they'd almost certainly need to move countries, probably jobs etc. Depending on their situation they may already be caring for inlaws, so that makes things harder.

So it's not an equal comparison. One gets a bigger house than they need, doesn't need to move area to get a house and ends up with a house with at least one spare bedroom and an annex. The other would need to move countries with all the complications and changing jobs/schools/leaving the other side of the family behind.

Without wanting to seem argumentative, I find it hard to believe that anyone thinks she's being unreasonable.

They might not ever progress to needing live-in carers, and even then, the OP will still have to do a lot for her parents - live-in carers don't cover it all.

And up to that point, the OP will be doing everything bar intimate care.

OP didn't say she wouldn't be doing care - she said she wouldn't do personal care like toilets, showers etc. There are lots of parents who would prefer not to have that kind of care from their child. That still leaves a very heavy caring burden which has the potential to continue for many years and years.

The toll it takes on your life and mental wellbeing can't be put into words. There are many people who wouldn't ever be willing to be carers, not for all the money in the world. And that's because it really is very hard, and unrelenting. Even if you're not doing the personal care.

The siblings who are objecting are perfectly within their rights to step up and do it instead, she's not stopping them. But they're not willing to upend their lives to support an elderly parent.

Is this a reverse, are you the sibling??

This is bang on the money. I can't believe people think you are being reasonable. I think you are screwing every penny you can out of your parents. I see a wolf in sheep's clothing.

@InheritenceArguments I suggest you get professional tax advice to avoid any surprises when your parents die.
HMRC has gifts with reservation of benefit rules, which include gifting money for someone to purchase an asset and the donor benefitting from the asset.

The amount of care you're prepared to give does not necessitate them living with you. Yes it makes it easier for you but they don't need to live with you.
I think this will be classed as deprivation of assets too

20% now and then 1/3 of the remainder is about 47%, leaving the other two around 26.5% each.
Added to that the Op has said she won't be doing care, so there is a not unreasonable chance that the remainder will be eaten into leaving the others with nothing/little and the Op with a bigger house, which may have increased in value further.

But also I note:
either a carer will have a bedroom in our house or they'll have to build an extension with an extra bedroom for a carer. It depends on how long we think a live-in carer will be required.
So her house has a spare bedroom in case a carer needs it, but if the carer is going to be long term, they're going to get the parents to extend their house further with their money, depleting anything left further and increasing her share.

As someone who has seen the effort going into caring, it does look like the Op is getting an awful lot of advantages and minimising the disadvantages to herself. I would be concerned as a sibling that the parents are going to find themselves doing more and more for "their" (read "her") house, not because I would see it as inheritance going, but more that the further they get into it the easier it is for the Op to "need this otherwise we can't...."

I think twenty percent is actually quite reasonable . If they have alot left then it doesn’t sound so worrying. I would try to stay on good terms with siblings though ,living abroad doesn’t mean you aren’t involved or don’t care, they can still come back regularly to give you support /respite if needed and help with things that can be done from a distance.

While I absolutely agree the parents money is theirs to spend as they like - I disagree that discussing what happens once people die is grim. It is entirely sensible.

the three children would normally expect to inherit in equal measure. The parents in this scenario need to be clear that they have entered this arrangement to suit their own needs and they are receiving benefit by being close to OP. They also need to clarify that the other two children should not expect to inherit a share of OP’s home.

OP’s angry sibling is being entirely unreasonable. His or her parents need to tell them that.

"TisButThyName · Yesterday 22:17

Because if her parents required a care home then the council would put a charge on the house to pay for it then on the death of her parents would expect the house to be sold to pay back the money.

If her parents die within 7 years of gifting this money and run up big care bills then there could also still be a risk of deprivation of assets and money owed."

This is a mixup of two things. the 7 year limit is about Inheritance tax. If you are given a gift, the giver has to stay alive for 7 years for the receiver to avoid inheritance tax. The amount of tax that is required reduces every year that the person stays alive until it gets to zero at 7 years.

The deliberate deprivation thing has NO LIMIT on how far a council can go back. Seriously NO LIMIT. Obvs the longer ago the money was spent, the less likely they are to decide that it was deliberate deprivation but seriously I say again there is NO LIMIT to how far back they can go.

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/globalassets/age-uk/documents/factsheets/fs40_deprivation_of_assets_in_social_care_fcs.pdf

this can be helpful too. https://www.independentliving.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Deprivation-of-capital.pdf

This. Everyone I know that's gone down this road has ended up on antidepressants.
Your parents are really going to do this to you?! In the prime of your lives?

This. It’s not that easy to avoid care costs.

Have you ever had to care for someone else other than your own children OP? You are putting yourself in the position where you will become the solution to every problem. With elderly parents it can take over your whole life to the point you will disappear. Have a read of the elderly parents Mumsnet board to see the kind of things that people have to deal with. I get on fine with my mum but after caring for her at a distance for several years there is no way on gods green earth that I would move her into my house. It really is like looking after an adult sized and strength toddler, who is losing skills and cognitive powers, not gaining them. Some cultures/families manage it, but imho you world need a household of several adults all pulling in the same direction to make it work. It’s not compatible with modern UK family life where the adults are working full time, usually outside the home. There are very very few circumstances in which I’d say it was the right thing to do.

@InheritenceArguments
Read the above very carefully.
You think it won't happen but we had to have a family meeting a couple of years ago as DM's partner was struggling to care for her..,,,,this had been going on for some time but he'd kept it quite.
None of the siblings could care her due to work or distance , or both.
Very quickly things had got very bad (incontinent , house stunk , kitchen / bathroom filthy)
Dm totally in denial.
It was a horrible time for everyone.
But if you're not prepare to pick up the slack you may find the financial implications high.