Inheritance and care home fees

We are talking about the mother in law leaving any left over money to her daughter via a vulnerable person trust. It’s not fraud. **

Our Universal credit is being stopped. Rules have changed.
We put some money into a trust for the children when they are 18. It now counts as our own personal savings, even though the money is for them.

Oh, here's a link from a year ago, about St Helier Hospital nr Sutton.

https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/23748284.met-police-opens-investigation-st-helier-hospital-staff/

Odd, as it mentions euthanasia in the headline. The whole issue of DNR really means 'the doctor can kill you now' because otherwise I simply cannot see why it's an issue... it applies if someone has had a heart attack or a stroke and is about to die... in many cases, that isn't likely to happen to an old person, they just hang on anyway and if they die, they die. They were insistent on it at Epsom Hospital even though we were there at all times... Cheerfully overruled us when we said no to DNR. We got Dad out fine the first time even though they raised a rumpus and got nasty. Second time, he was ill so he had to be on a drip - and suddenly died on the third day. Plausible at the time, don't get me wrong, but it was a bit quick in retrospect.

Ah, right... so the rest of it is true.

The injections one is tricky. Often it doesn't get to that point if everything else works - the wear and tear and dehydration, I mean. So, okay, the spy camera in my mother's care home room was obscured the night she died, and that never happens normally. They seemed to know to change her minutes before she passed. And with Dad, well, giving him antibiotics in Epsom District Hospital, leaving it to the last few hours - as it turned out - to mention the giveaway words 'pathway' and 'end of life' - 'palliative' too I think, whereas the day before would have given the heads up. Again, they seemed to know to change him just before it happened.

Oh, we got the coroner to do a postmortem on Mum but nothing was proven and I daresay they're in on it.

There are cuttings to suggest the use of a certain drug to 'hasten' end of life - not really sure it's illegal frankly, they find a way around it. It used to be the old trick of just upping the morphine to ease pain, then OD-ing it, even the King in the late 30s had that done to him, I understand.

There is a media shutdown on this issue, however. The press does allude to it, but there is no appetite to run this story or spell it out, at least.

Sigh... which part of that is supposed to be nuts? Most of it's in the public domain.

Will she benefit?
Will she be uprooted and taken to another care home? For as long as the money is there? Or will she stay where she is, what has become her home, receiving the same care that she's getting now but just having her mum's money swallowed up?

And again.

The care will be the same regardless of who pays for it.

The OP's MIL could leave it to the local cat sanctuary if she so chooses. She doesn't have to leave it to her daughter and given the circumstances it would make sense to have the money in a trust so her daughter can actually gain a tangible benefit from it for the rest of her life.

Quite.
The prospect of being so severely disabled but with a 30 year life expectancy doesn't bear thinking about. I can quite see why your mil wants to do her best to help her daughter.
︎@Hateam it sounds like an utterly tragic situation and I hope you manage to find a way to make your wife's life bearable.
Glad to see some constructive helpful replies among the spite.

The ‘point’ is that the inheritance is rightfully his DW’s and the only way she’ll benefit from it is using for better care than the LA provide if they are footing the bill. The council are not ‘depriving’ anyone of their assets, they are using them to fund care. Do you think it’s right for OP to inherit money rightfully meant for his wife and still allow the tax payer to fund her care ? You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see what’s going on here.

You are being unreasonable.
If you don’t want the council to receive your wife’s money, withdraw her from council care and pay for it yourself.

Oh, but it is.

The MIL's care needs are being funded, we don't know how but at 94 she will have to pay for some of her care needs.

The wife, who is aged what? In her 60s? Should her care needs be funded from the state or from her savings? What if she had a brain tumor in her 50's? Should her care be funded from savings/house ownership/the state? Should her husband lose his house if it needed to be sold to fund her care?

And what, when the current 30s/40s generation becomes older should happen?

The MIL is irrelevant, I believe, in all this - it comes down to what the DW should be expected to pay in the event of an early bad diagnosis.

And it comes down to whether we believe in whole life social welfare, or abandoning ill people.

And funding this, with an aging population, is something that successive governments have been burying their heads in the sand about for many, many years

It's not deprivation of assets as they are not currently her assets. All that's being talked about here is not giving someone assets that they themselves would be deprived of by the council. Genuinely can't imagine anyone being daft enough to leave an inheritance that would just be 'swallowed up'. What's the point?

Course not. What MIL does with her money is her business. These assets dont belong to the daughter so the LA cant punish her for how she decides to allocate them.

I can't imagine being so entitled that you think you have any scope to complain about your 'massive mortgage' (on the home you chose to buy in the area you chose to live), 'childcare fees' (on the children you chose to have) and 'student loan' (on the studying you chose to undertake).

Those are your perfectly reasonable choices.

OP is making their own perfectly reasonable choices. Not all available savings should be put into the 'public purse' - that doesn't make any sense.

Depends on how much is left though doesn’t it ? The crux of the matter here is that there’s not much they can do to stop MiL’s funds being depleted to pay for her own care, unless that’s already in hand. And surely if OP’s wife is already in care, any attempt to divert funds which could pay for her care would be regarded as deprivation of assets since she had a reasonable expectation of needing care at the time they were diverted.

The alternative is him pocketing the inheritance and the tax payer funding his wife’s care. He wouldn’t be funding the care, the inheritance belongs to the wife and the only way she can benefit from it in the present circumstance is via better care than the bog standard variety provided by the LA. You think this is acceptable ?

The alternative is you take her out of council care and use the £180,000 to fund private care for as long as that lasts her.

Otherwise no, you shouldn’t be hiding that from the council or making off with your wife’s inheritance.

Would they really, most would try and minimise I think. In my recent experience it was actually the council that advised that it would make sense to check wills to make sure funds were not left to someone in the care system (and before people start going on at me I was not the beneficiary in this situation), but wills were changed. The solicitor advised that this is very common practice.

My dad had an insurance policy for care fees (of a sort which no longer exists), and when he went into a care home he sold his house and spent some of that money to buy annuities. Together with his pensions, he was actually covering all of his care costs with no state support (even making a small monthly profit; he outlived the actuarial predictions by many years, so he got all his money back).

Because of that he didn't bother applying for Attendance Allowance, not wanting to be a drain on the state. When I took over as his Court-of-Protection Deputy I was told off for not applying, as I had a duty to act in his financial best interests!!! Isn't OP trying to act in his wife's financial best interests?

Of course no one would want to. But they would

or its just good business ?

Op has had good advice. It sounds like a lot of money, but care home fees are so high it'd be gone quickly. Shes worked, had money from her home, now penalised for planning? Why shouldn't daughter and grand children get some sort of inheritance?

Lots of envy in this thread.

@Dufrise of course they’re all thieves.

I can’t imagine being so entitled that you think struggling taxpayers and councils should fund your wife’s care home fees when there is £180k in her bank account. The bare faced cheek!