Cockroach cafe - Spring to Summer 2026

@ManchesterMonkey Generally speaking, the first £325,000 of an individual's estate is free of inheritance tax (the 'nil rate band'). Any gifts (other than certain exempt gifts, including the £3,000 per year mentioned by pp) within 7 years of death would be added to the value of the estate for inheritance tax purposes. However, there is also an additional £175,000 'residence nil rate band' available when an individual leaves their home to their 'direct descendents' when they pass. So it seems unlikely that your mum's estate would have any inheritance tax to pay.

Gifts don't result in inheritance tax to pay before death, and assuming she didn't somehow generate more assets (eg if the flat increases in value) based on the above re nil rate bands I don't think gifts from the £200k would result in inheritance tax to pay on her death.

The thing to watch for is what would happen if your mum needed paid care and had given away money. If she has enough saved (from the £200k) to pay for what she needs this isn't an issue. But if the local authority have to pay towards her care (usually if she has savings below £23,500) they can look at whether there has been 'deprevation of assets'. This is where someone has 'intentionally' given away assets to avoid paying for care. The problem, from what I have read. about this is that regardless of whether your mum actually had avoiding care fees in her mind when she made the gifts, the local authority seem to be able to argue that this has happened if needing future care seemed likely when the gift was made. Since you mum would be gifting the money when she has already had falls and her health is declining from what I've read it sounds quite likely that they could make this claim. If this happens, the local authority could refuse/reduce funding and the family would have to pay (or care for her themselves) if she can't afford it.

From what you've said, I'd be wary of the future implications for you if your mum gave away significant sums. It sounds like if she did need paid care and the local authority refused funding on these grounds your brothers may well expect you to act as her carer.

I'd say it would be better for her to keep the money as savings so she can self fund any care she might go on to need- from what lots of people on this thread have said this gives her far more choice about what care she receives and when she decides she wants it.

I suspect the brother’s problem is:
if mum lives in an expensive house with no savings her care package will be paid for by the council. But if mum downsizes and has £200k cash in the bank, she will have to self fund that care package. The care package might cost £1,000 plus a month although getting attendance allowance would offset some of the cost.

Once mum needs live in care she would be self funding anyway with a £300k house only she lives in but ‘D’B will likely try to put that off as long as possible even if it means mum is unsafe at home alone for hours on end.

@ManchesterMonkey my parents gave only me PoA. If your mum is totally with it she could redo her PoA and give it solely to you. It might mean that you can better ensure she gets the care she needs although it might impact your future relationships with your brothers.

@ManchesterMonkey no inheritance tax is due on estates below £325,000. And that can increase to £500,000 if the main residence is left to children/grandchildren so it doesn't sound like you need to worry about inheritance tax. Deprivation of assets follows different rules and that you would have to be very careful about. If the gifting if cash is purely for inheritance tax purposes don't bother, it's very unlikely to be an issue.

I agree that rather than buying a flat, you look at renting one in an over-55 facility or similar.

The advantages are not having to worry about maintenance or selling the place again when your mum eventually vacates the place. You save on the buying and selling fees as well as the maintenance. It will be set up for frail people in mind so lifts and rails etc in the common areas. Also much less likely to have anti social neighbours than in a normal flat. That may help with the awkward brother who I’m guessing will object to renting as being “dead money” instead of owning a property.

Just re reading your post @ManchesterMonkey and yes your mum can gift a little each year. She can gift £3,000 a year from her estate to whoever she likes without it being considered for IHT. In the first year she can use the previous year’s allowance as well so can gift £6k.

Info on Deprivation of Assets.
https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/care/paying-for-care/paying-for-a-care-home/deprivation-of-assets/#:~:text='Deprivation%20of%20assets'%20is%20when,assessment%20for%20care%20home%20fees.

Hi @ManchesterMonkey. Everyone else will be along shortly to tell you how annoying brothers can be. You sound like an amazing daughter to have been there that long. Hopefully I can help with a few practicalities.

Tell your brother that your mum wants to move because financially a small place is not affordable out of her small pensions. Add up the council tax, heating, other utilities etc and then estimate how much the 2 bed flat would be for bills. That’s likely to be a healthy saving. Plus show him a few UK news stories about inflation from the Iran war likely to hit the UK particularly hard plus pensioner poverty, cost of living crisis etc. She needs to future proof herself financially as much as she can. Plus a flat in a block with a lift or ground floor flat will be much more practical as she gets less mobile.

BUT…if she has had a series of falls recently and you have been there for 6 weeks do you think she will be able to live independently in the long term. There are costs involved in buying a flat and if she is likely to need to sell it and move into a care home soon as she isn’t safe to live alone that’s a lot of money and time wasted in getting her set up in a new home. Could she rent close to you in a place for over 55s?

If she needs care - either care visits or a care home - and has £200k+ in the bank from the house sale she will need to self fund the care she needs. She probably cannot gift you or your brothers money from the sale as the council would consider that deprivation of assets. But the inheritance tax allowance in the UK is £325k so if her estate (total value of any house she owns plus all cash in bank, investments etc) is worth less than that when she dies, it will not be taxed at all.

Help!

My mum - 81 - wants to move from her too large and isolated house in the middle of nowhere to a ground floor flat near us in Manchester.

She is increasingly unsafe here. This is her decision, in no way have I influenced her. She can also get a better standard of care through Manchester City Council.

I have put in place a personal alarm and I’m putting in place a light touch care package via her local authority who are pretty useless.

Although my brothers and I have Power of Attorney, my mum, although frail, is completely with it and cognitively fine.

She keeps saying what she wants. She’s asked me to get the house valued and find somewhere suitable.

One of my brothers is opposed to her leaving the house and moving to a flat.

My gut instinct is that this is about money for him, although he will claim she’s better in the house.

He’s been incredibly controlling - all decisions must be ‘joint’ but the decision, surely to god, lies with her. He lives in Europe, he’s not seeing the decline or giving the anywhere near the level of support me and Mr Monkey are giving. Lots of praise for me, but it feels manipulative.

if she moves to Manchester, we are nearby and although my partner and I aren’t willing or able to take on full care, we’re 10 mins walk and she can get care from the council.

My other brother is flaky and does what he’s bid, although I think he’s coming to the same conclusion as me. He lives two hours away,

She’s just not safe here.

After a series of falls, I’ve been here for a month, and likely to be another two weeks, to make sure she’s OK. I live 90 minutes away by public transport.

I’ve not been home for all of that time. I’m her de facto carer.

I’m self-employed, so I’m not working as much as I should be. My brothers must be finding it mighty convenient that I’m not employed,

She wants to sell this house, which is probably in the region of £320k. She would be able to buy a perfectly nice 2 bedroom flat near us for about £110k. She has no savings. Her income is the state pension and a tiny private pension.

Would the estate liable for inheritance tax on the figure of about 200k that’s the gap between the current house and a flat when she dies?

Can she gift money now out of the gap and how much?

I want to find a way to know what I’m on about it when my brother starts objecting to what she needs!

I couldn’t give a toss about the £. I want her to be safe.

DM now in some small, quiet, distress. I dont think she is in pain. More distress of the soul. Essentially a constant quiet whimper. DB says she has been like this for the last few days.

Thank you for the supportive comments last week, I really appreciated it.

My mum’s house has just gone on the market, the movers have been in for a consultation and we’ve visited the new place to measure everything.

I have to leave her for a couple of weeks but I’ll be back for her move. I have no idea how she’ll keep up with house viewings, she’s disorganised and doesn’t like checking emails and voicemails so I hope she’s not in bed in her pyjamas when the estate agent arrives.

Anyway, it’s all happening and so far none of her usual backtracking, she seems happy to go ahead so far.

When we had the record summer temperatures a few years ago, I went to stay with mum to make sure she stayed hydrated etc. Turns out keeping the house at tropical temperatures acclimatises the body, because she was absolutely fine and I was the one soaking my feet in buckets of ice while working on my laptop in a darkened room.

I believe that the temperature regulating system in the brain gets effed up in many cases of dementia.
A lot of people seem to really feel cold, even in a normal ambient temperature.

@Seeingadistance I certainly find it very uncomfortable. In the middle of winter I wear lightweight summer trousers and layers so I can strip down to a t-shirt. I still boil but mum will be sitting there in a thick cardigan with a rug on her lap.

Bloody hell - that level of heat can't possibly be good for her!

Mum has the thermostat set to 28/29°c. It's in the very small, well insulated living room where she also has an electric heater. She puts the electric heater on max then panics because the boiler has gone off (she checks it frequently during the day). She definitely used to understand and only puts the electric heater on because she likes the flame effect.
She also has 2 freezers, a large one and a smaller one which are constantly switched on even though only the big has anything in it and even that would fit easily in the small one. The smaller one was bought for dad to keep his fishing bait in. It's never been used for food. Dad died 4 years ago and had given up fishing several years earlier.
Mum can't understand why her fuel bills didn't have when dad died.

I remember heating woes. When mum was living alone after dad went into care, and had earlyish dementia, she had the flat boiling hot even when she was out. I asked on MN about any devices that would limit the thermostat settings so that her money wouldn't run out and got accused of abuse!

Oh god, heating/gas/electricity. Not sure it's cognitive decline as much as not understanding because it was always something Dad took care of. Mum has the timer set to be on from 7am to 11pm then turns it off with the thermostat if she goes out (just turns till she hears a click). She is usually out for a few hours a day. Needless to say her bills are huge (they had never switched supplier) so I decided to switch them for her, but it took me 6 weeks of explaining over and over how it was now possible to get both gas and electric from the same company (thanks Mrs Thatcher), that it wouldn't affect her BG servicing contract, that it could save a lot of money, for the change to be accepted. I would like to change the timer now the weather is warmer but not sure I can take the grief. As well as heating on all day every day she uses fan heaters to "top up" and goes around barefoot even in winter, they've always been a shoes off house and she thinks socks/slippers are a slipping/tripping hazard. Then she worries about money.

Heating is an issue here too. Its werid how its such a common thing to crop up. DM has exceptional complicated modern electrical heaters too, I hate them.

OMG I thought that it was unique to MIL!
She is sharp as a tack in lots of ways, and hasn’t mentioned it for a couple of days because I told her I could no longer have the discussion if she would neither do anything nor let me do anything. (I can’t change the thermostat because she is very clear at what it’s set at)
it’s so interesting that it’s something that indicated issues for others. I don’t suppose there is anything else I can do except continue to keep a watching eye as much as I can from the other end of the country!
How reassuring, in a grim kind of way, to know that every odd,quirky path has been trodden by others.

Heating is one of mum's things as well. She phones British Gas because the boiler has gone off when the thermostat kicks in.

I have to say, getting bothered about the heating was one of mums symptoms of cognitive decline. She was no longer capable of understanding how thermostats work and was worried because the radiators were going off on warm days. I’d reassure her that everything was working as it should, but she kept coming back to it. Things going wrong in the house really really bothered her and caused terrible anxiety, so it was a double whammy.

Can you pacify her with logic? “Yes they are coming on later/ less as it’s getting warmer now. You can forget about the heating now till Autumn.”

Or cost v benefit? “Mum it would only cost £60 for someone to come and look at it. Every day you worry about it and you could get reassurance for just £60. Isn’t that worth it for peace of mind?”

Honestly, if you feel confident, I would just secretly change the thermostat when she is in the loo and see if that fixes her worrying.

I appreciate the replies and I can see your points.
As an example, MIL is worried about her heating so she tracks it every day (when the radiators come on). Then she tells me about what happened that day and asks if she should call the gas company. She doesn’t want to because it will cost her £60 for a call out. I have told her to change thermostat, switch it off etc to see if it changes but she is scared to try in case she breaks it, and won’t let me try when I visit for same reason. But it worries her and she stirs it up every day by noting when the radiators go on and off. So every day she tells me what the radiators are doing and asks me what I think. And every time I repeat as above. But she will not spend the money.
It is not just me, she is constantly being assessed for medical support, and I keep being told I cannot yet make any decisions for her (like increasing carers etc) because she has full mental capacity.
I think she lives in her own head too much, and just needs constant reassurance but doesn’t trust me enough to hear it from me.
I have tried the, I know you don’t need this (eg fall alarm) right now but you might do in the future, and she just tells me not to be so negative.
TBH she has always been very similar in how she speaks since I’ve known her, (23 years) over repeating things to everyone, but now she only really has me and my daughters to talk to and she doesn’t want to worry them so just expresses her worries to me.

I've also found that the 'here's something to think about as a possibility for some time in the future if you need it' approach is useful. My DM is very, very resistant to any change so I found this a really useful way of getting her to engage in a discussion about things that might make life easier without her just shutting down the discussion because she doesn't want change. For some smaller changes, I found that once she was willing to listen she quite quickly decided some of the ideas were probably good. I also always position any change as temporary- just something to 'try' to see how it works or to help whilst she's 'busy'. I sometimes combine the 2 ideas and suggest we try something (eg me ordering her shopping online to be delivered to her rather than a 3 hour round trip to take her to the supermarket) a few times 'just so we know how it works in case something happens and we can't do it the usual way in the future'.

I also wonder if there is some cognitive decline with your DM if you are having the same conversations repeatedly, particularly if it's in the same phone call. Looking back, I think my DM had been covering up her decline for quite a long time before she was willing to discuss seeking some help.