Fed up of reading threads asking how they can get out of paying care home fees.

I quite agree with you, Always, and I'm 75 so technically in 'God's waiting room'. I'm not worried, I do my best to keep as healthy as possible and live for today. I own my home so if it became necessary, it could be sold to provide care. My one adult child has already been well provided for so has no need of anything I might leave behind - though of course I hope I will just live at home and pop off quickly and quietly when the time comes (don't we all wish that). However he is caring, has had the idea of buying a big house with an integral flat for me but I prefer being on my own. I do know that if it became impossible for me to stay at home, even with regular carers, he would oversee any changes and be scrupulous about it.

My late husband and I never thought about what we would inherit from our parents, except in passing. My mum had a leaking abdominal aneurysm and just died; it was a shock at the time but she was 86 and had always been fit and well up to that point. His poor mum had Parkinson's on top of other health problems and we cared for her, with hired help, when she needed it so she died at home.

I am with the op but, honestly, haven't seen many threads about this subject.

What's interesting is there is a lot of talk about the so called boomer wealth trickling down the generations. But nothing will come, it will go on care home fees.

I just wanted to say that there was no help when my DH was dying of cancer. I looked after him alone, there was no hospice space available. So it is not always true that people with cancer get looked after. We had young kids too - it was a nightmare.

Because it’s really hard. I know, because we did for my grandma for more than a decade. It is physically and emotionally gruelling, you will be screamed at, punched, sobbed at, you will watch someone you love lose themselves. The hoists require two people to manage safely but you’ll end up doing it alone and wrecking your own physical health. Have you ever tried to change incontinence pads on a physically aggressive, fully grown adult, who can’t remember who you are and thinks you are trying to kill them? It’s impossible, and you will end up covered in faeces and cleaning up everywhere. You can’t do it and work in a paid job, or look after a family. You will be skint, in pain, exhausted, and could be doing it for decades. It’s not an easy thing at all.

This is a weird take on it. The ‘inheritance’ is what’s left at the point of death, after all is sorted out, not what a person has in their later years when they need care.

Greedy relatives considering their families money to be their inheritance before the people have even died is just plain greed.

It’s definitely not cheaper to have 24 hours carers than it is to be in a residential setting.

I enthusiastically agree with the second paragraph

With the best will in the world I couldn't have cared for either of my parents. I live in an upstairs flat with no spare bedroom and 2 adult dcs at home. Where would they have slept?. I also have a shower where you have to step over the bath to get in. Dad had dementia,mum lost all mobility. Oh,I work full time too.
Not everyone on MN lives in a huge house with help on hand! Dad's house funded his care home and mums would have funded hers if she hadn't died 3 weeks into her stay.

FWIW, every single person I know who has smugly referred to not needing to worry about care home fees as they've taken advice and created trusts for the family home appears to be heading for a train wreck when they answered a few questions about what they've done, how it operates, the nature of the trusts and the advice.

Different kettle fo fish for my acquaintances with significant wealth.

The majority of people who are happy to lose their inheritance to care fees tend to be reasonably well off. It's very easy to sit in your own house with your car and savings and sound high and mighty about the moral highground.

The fact is we have built a society that is increasingly unfair to those on the bottom of the ladder and inheritance is one of the few ways that these people can feel secure as they approach their own older years. Especially as we dismantle the NHS and social care programs.

I'm not talking about people who are set to inherit stately homes with a 50 acre estate plus orchard. I'm talking about someone on a very low income who may inherit a tiny bungalow and that's the most valuable thing they'll ever own in their lives.

Make society fairer and only then should we talk about taking away granny's house.

Don't forget that many people had tax relief on their mortgage interest so their purchase was subsidised by the state.

I don’t intend for my DM/FIL to go into a home at all. I won’t be doing it myself either. I think it is cheaper and better to be cared for at home.

Like national insurance, taken from wages/ income at source? I'd prefer that to the current system

I think it’s quite telling that people’s primary concern is their lack of inheritance rather than the quality of care their parents receive.

As I get older I have grown to realise nobody cares about kids or the elderly.

This - I don’t understand why there is an assumption the state is ever responsible for you. It should be the back up plan for those most vulnerable and in need, not the status quo.

Why can’t the family care for their elderly relatives? That is the way it was done for millennia. That is the compact between generations that no one has time for anymore.

So who pays the bill then??

Having seen some council-run care homes, I would far rather pass up my whole house than end my life in one of those places. It was utterly awful.

Yup, I can see that working.

DS: 'Go on mum, crack on with the dying, I'm desperate for the cash'
Me: 'No, sod off you ungrateful little shite, I'm leaving it to the cats home, hahahaha'

I have no intention of being in a care home, but not because I want to hand on the inheritance to the kids. I would far rather die at home ta very much. The idea of ending up in a care home of any sort makes my blood run cold.

I won't be wealthy at that point so you will "pay" although not really because I've already covered it. Think of it like I'm putting my card behind the bar. You're welcome.

I totally agree. I'd be queuing up for it if I lost the ability to enjoy life. But I just think some greedy people might see it as a way to extract maximum cash from their ailing parents.

The only advantage to paying yourself is that you can move your relative and don't have to put up with substandard care that social services says is 'fine'.

However, in general, there's no really functioning market because so many care homes get large amounts of LA funding. So there's no real attempt to do better. At least where my relative is. And not very good oversight or regulation.

Too many people taking and not putting into the system, year in year out.

There have already been several cases where parents have signed over their house and the child or grand child then tried to evict them, bth for IHT avoidance and care home fee risk management, Other cases where the 'parent' tried to stay in the home, not pay a genuine, commercial rent on which tax is pauid by the recipient, preclude the risk of eviction and avoid any claim of deprtivation of assets and manage the risk of any surviving spouse future re-marriage.

Tricky to manage competing objectives when the real intention is to avoid tax

I expect more court cases, including against the providers of 'advice', at least on of which surprisingly ended up owning the house in question.

I think this is it, it's the unfairness of it all. I have a family member paying over £5,000 a month. This is in a fairly basic, middle of the road home, not fancy at all (in fact pretty tatty in terms of furnishings, paint peeling off the walls etc and I know for a fact most of the carers - who are amazing - aren't paid great salaries, so where's it going- to profit someone already in the 1%). The LA does not pay that much. The care is the same. It's unfair. And people should not be profiting from my relative's illness it's really evil, frankly. Care homes should be not for profit.

I actually would care a lot less about my relative using all their savings if I knew every penny of that 5k plus per month was paid in salary and decent training for the carers as they are amazing and do a very difficult job in difficult circumstances (made more difficult as the buildings aren't well maintained). But of course this isn't the case. And my relative has been in another home that was also creaming off a fat profit but where there was NOT good care (hence the move) and where the carers were not, in my observation, treated well and neither were the residents.