With dementia on the increase, AIBU to think that many overestimate the amount of inheritance they may receive?

Indeed, nobody should assume an inheritance unless perhaps your family is really super duper wealthy, and even then there are things that can go wrong.

Whatever happened to the suggestions from thr Dilnot inquiry? I seem to recall that was largely pretty well received but did it get implemented?

YANBU- I agree. I also agree with a PP that many people are completely delusional about how much care someone might need.

I see many snarky comments on here about how awful it is that kids wont help their parents and how cold they are not to "care" for them in their old age but what they don't get is that when you are doubly incontinent you may well need 4 care calls a day. No working adult would be able to provide that for their parents (as well as caring for their own kids) its completely unrealistic.

I also think we are too obsessed these days with keeping people alive when their quality of life is utterly appalling. Its dreadful. I am not even talking about assisted suicide or anything like that but the fact that we continue to aggressively intervene to keep someone's life going when they are confused, frail, cant eat or drink properly, bed bound, in constant unrelenting pain etc
Its inhumane to keep someone alive like that.

As has been said on many an inheritance thread this week… it’s not your money and you are not entitled to any of it, so shouldn’t be calculating how much you will receive anyway. It may get eaten up in care home fees or left to the orphans of Gaza or the donkeys of Greece.

Plan your life without it and be pleasantly heartened if you get anything in due course. And perhaps step up to ensure your parent has all the support and medical interventions they need to preserve health, mental acuity and the quality of their life over the remaining years.

@Whyhaveibeencutoutofmamsnot

I am spending my money now on things I enjoy (which includes helping DC's house purchases etc) - give with a warm hand.

Same here. Today's younger generation need the helping hand more than ever.

This is why we've been helping our son during his Uni years and first few years of working. Far better to help him setting out in life and making him self-sufficient with a good education/good career than leaving him to fend for himself in minimum wage work having to wait for his inheritance before he can buy a house, have expensive holidays, etc. We've helped set him up so that he can earn enough to look after himself and have a good life, then he won't "need" any more inheritance from us. "Teach a man to fish and he'll never be hungry, give a man a fish and he'll be hungry the next day"

We both "suffered" because neither of our parents gave us any financial support when we were young and we had to fend for ourselves in low paid crap jobs due to effectively not being allowed to have a better education. That had knock on effects, such as compromising on what adult/further education we could do and what jobs we could do. It took us both many years to scrabble some qualifications together to get into better professions and then years more doing self study to get professional qualifications alongside full time work. It meant we delayed getting married and delayed starting a family. It meant we couldn't buy a house near either set of parents. Ultimately it meant our parents only had one grandchild as I was too old to have a second after having my first at nearly 40! It meant they didn't see as much of their grandchild as they wanted because we didn't live close and they became too old to drive long distances.

By the time we got our respective inheritances, it did us no good as we were approaching retirement ourselves and had paid off our mortgage etc. The money is literally sat in the bank unspent - except for amounts given to our son so he didn't need to take out maximum student loans, amounts we've filtered into his ISA accounts and amounts we paid to help set him up in his unfurnished rented flat in the city he first started working (hundreds of miles away) for furniture, utensils, F&F etc. We encouraged him to move away for work so that he wouldn't be limited by poor career/job availability in the crap run down region we live in and the only way to do that was to subsidise the costs of him relocating! We've both said we'd wished our grandparents had left their estates directly to our son, but they didn't, so we've been drip feeding their money to him ourselves to help him when he needs, not make him wait until we die!

Had our respective parents given us some financial support, even small amounts, our lives, and those of our parents could have been so different. We didn't want to impose that on our son. I'm sure our parents would have preferred for us to have lived closer to them, given them more grandchildren, been close enough for them to have had more "fun" with the grandchildren, etc., than just watching numbers get bigger in their building society passbooks!

Would be better if the care system was more equal and self funders were not having to subsidise local authority funded residents.
Also if properly was taken into account when assessing funding for care at home. My neighbour refused to go into a care home but had two carers round four times a day paid for by local authority another neighbour had to sell her house to pay for residential care. First neighbours family had a large inheritance second neighbours family had not a lot.
I am spending my money now on things I enjoy (which includes helping DC's house purchases etc) - give with a warm hand.

I’m a firm believer that any money or assets belonging to parents while they are alive are for their own use - so if they need care, that’s what it should be used for!

My DM went into a lovely care home for the last four years of her life, and when she passed away.

Yes, the money from selling her house had greatly diminished, and myself and my siblings inherited a share of a much smaller amount than there would have been if she hadn’t required care, but she was very well looked after and happy for those four years, and for that I will be forever thankful.

As the carer for DH with dementia I find it quite alarming that we have a thread which in essence runs my parent has been struck by an awful debilitating disease. Oh no, I might not get any money. People should always come ahead of your bank balance.

The pil both had Alzheimer’s. All their savings and house were used. The sad thing is that they were lifelong skinflints.

I don’t know what will happen, I’m sure, as the Govt is meddling in pensions, and as for any future Green/very left wing involvement - well, the elderly will be left with few assets which will mean more burden on the taxpayer.

My current job ( soon to be ending) is going round to older people's homes, helping them to claim Attendance allowance ,pension credit etc. I think we are facing a real crisis. We currently have people in their eighties and nineties trying to look after spouses and both struggling and we now regularly have people in their seventies ( and often not in great health themselves ) looking after parents in their nineties. Many are not coping and not being picked up by social services. I go into so many houses that are filthy, in states of disrepair, filthy carpets, hoarding. It's not that people want to live like this but things have just got out of hand and o-one to help. It is going to get a lot worse as people have less kids and adult kids are often geographically distant or don't want to help. I do think it needs cross party talks to address the issues we face because currently it seems like no-one is addressing social care issues.

It's something I've often said, op.
In dhs family, his uncle ended up spending circa £200k on care home fees before he died (about 4/5 years worth). It was a nice home and he was happy there.
His great uncle is still paying £5k per month and has been for years. (We are in the Midlands not the SE)
His house was sold, his (substantial) savings are gone.
It's sad, really. I'm glad they are/were being cared for well, but they could have spent more/had more comfortable old age/travelled...hoarding money is never a great idea once old, enjoy it is my advice.
And anyone who is "relying" on an inheritance is a fool.

I think people are delusional about the amount of care the elderly can need even without Alzheimer’s.

Some many people are like “I don’t want my kids to look after me I’ll be fine”. My parents died relatively young and didn’t require a care home but things like managing appointments, false teeth walking sticks glasses bank accounts etc because they couldn’t manage anymore was a part time job in itself.

And if I didn’t do those things nobody else would. My dad lived in supported accommodation and even now there is a huge gap in what carers and the state will do versus what is actually required.

It really worries me, it’s not going to be good for the tidal wave of elderly people coming.

That’s a very long post and I can’t work out what your point or question is.

It should never be relied on or form part of future financial planning ... anything left to you is a bonus, not a right.

I never bank on inheritance either. My dad is 88 and currently independent but my Grandma ( his mum ) lived well into her nineties and was in a care home with dementia so I'm conscious that it may well happen to him too.
I have a group of 5 close friends from school days so we know the ins and outs of each others lives and out of the four that have lost both parents only one has received any significant inheritance as all the others parents ended up in care homes and houses needed to be sold.