To think it would benefit my 2 sons if their grandad's house didn't have to be sold in the future for care home fees

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We have 2 sons (aged 16 and 18). Everyone knows about the dire prospects of any teenagers today ever getting on the property ladder. My sons have always been close to their paternal grandparents. Grandmother died 4 years ago after having Alzheimer's for 7 years. She ended up in a home for last 6 months as my father in law looked after her at home.

He is now 81 and has been diagnosed with dementia. We own our house outright. My husband has one brother who is married, nearly 5o with no children. He owns 2 houses outright, one which he rents out.

We save extremely hard for our future and hopefully house deposits for our sons but the outlook is very bleak from reading the papers/watching the news and I find the outlook for their future very depressing - will they be living with us until they are 40

After the diagnosis my brother in law said he thought it would be a good idea to get his dad's bank balance down as he has nearly £90,000 in the bank. He and my husband withdrew £3,000 each a few months ago with my father in law's approval But I think it is too late for this to make any difference to any possible future care needs. Even if it was reduced to under £23,000 which I understand is the threshold limit for contributing towards your care, the care home would say the house had to be sold.

I am sure my father in law would like to see his only grandchildren live in the house when he passes away, rather than it being sold for care home fees. My brother in law has no children to worry about, has a brilliant final salary pension and a very large bank balance.

I don't know why he came up with the idea to start reducing the bank balance when it will make no difference to his dad having to fund his care if the time comes. No more money has been withdrawn yet but my husband is burying his head in the sand over this and is just agreeing with his older brother.

I do not want a penny from any estate, I would just love to see our sons get a helping hand for the future but this would be via us as the will is 50/50 between my husband and his brother.

I am a very positive person and don't get depressed about much but I feel utter despair at the housing prospects for today's teenagers.

Please tell me if I am being out of order .

OP, you say you've never had a benefit in your life. Really? Not one? No child benefit, universal until last year? You paid for your children's prescriptions, and your own when pregnant? None of your family ever used a single NHS service, GP, hospital, dental, free eye tests? Did your kids go entirely to private education and not to university? You have never parked in the street, got your bin emptied, used a local park, swum at a council pool?

That is amazing if true.

deprivation of assets is deprivation of assets, it doesn't matter when you do it.

That is patently absurd and doesn't tally with what I read on AgeUK fact sheet.

Are you trying to say that if someone made a gift of £20k to a relative 20 years prior that would be seen as deprivation of assets for the purposes of trying to avoid care home fees?

From an inheritance tax (iht) perspective you may be ok with the £6k as a person can gift up to £3k a year without it being deemed a potentially exempt transfer (pet) and if they did not gift last year they can carry forward that one year's allowance. Therefore £6k this year but £3k next year in total. (Small gifts of up to £250 don't count but total to any one person is considered).

From a capacity perspective you are on shaky ground. If there isn't a power of attorney in place then get one if he still has capacity. It will take months to be processed at court of protection (cop). If you are already acting under a power of attorney be aware that the only gifts this entitles you to make are normal small tokens for birthdays and Christmas etc. for larger gifts or for actual estate planning you would need to apply to the cop proving that there would be no detriment to your fil. This can only be proven by showing that any gifts are from funds in excess of any that he may require. With annual nursing home fees of c£38k a year plus, I doubt you can show this, unless the house is very valuable. Seek legal advice from a specialist if you try this route.

Improper use of powers of attorney is sadly more common than you'd think but is illegal and is monitored.

He has saved for a rainy day. This is his umbrella. Let him use it in peace. If there's anything left that's a great bonus.

Oh, and the money wouldn't HAVE to come via dh. You could consider a deed of variation of the will when the time comes to drop the money down to your sons immediately. That would stop the pet rules running as a gift from you. Also tests how much you mean it... If you or bil had actually taken advice you'd know this. Maybe fil had and these were the choices he made.

Not everyone believes in inheritance.

It definitely does matter when how and why re deprivation of assets- I do these assessments!
The main situation where we take 'notional capital' into account is where we were helping fund before a house sale, then the family come back to us way before we would expect them to, based on the house sale price.

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/268683/Factsheet_6_update__tweak_.pdf this might interest some of you. New care bill!

Having read (well, browsed) through the thread I know the OP is long gone (she signed off and bid us all farewell several pages back) but for what it's worth:

It's definitely not the case that those who can't pay get "the same care for free" - the basic standard that councils pay for is pretty grim.

It's right and proper that those who save should enjoy the benefits of their assets while they are alive, to ensure they are comfortable, and in the very last stages of life that should include buying appropriate care.

It is certainly not "fair" that some people get a massive windfall of assets when their grandparents die and some don't, with nothing any of us can do to influence whether we have this luck or don't. Some never have a chance to because their grandparents were poor, some would have had a chance but the wealth all got spent on a long final illness needing long-term care, some hit the jackpot and inherit big lump sums.

As a society, we choose to mitigate this unfairness, whilst not eliminating it completely. Therefore, when someone is needing long-term care there is a level of wealth they are allowed to retain, and when someone dies with significant wealth there are inheritance taxes which enable the rest of the country to share a portion of the undeserved good-fortune of the few who get lucky (fewer than 10% of estates pay any inheritance tax, it's really not that unfair) - the system we have isn't perfect, if I was in charge I would increase the threshold that people can keep before care home costs are born by the state, and decrease the threshold at which inheritance tax kicks in - such that both were at a similar level of around £80k. This would probably leave a tax deficit which I would balance with a general tax rise. Probably a good thing I'm not in charge though, the Daily Mail would be up in arms at the horror.

The OPs kids are no more deserving than the rest of the population to receive an inheritance, and 90% of people don't.

My understanding of the Deprivation of Assets thing is it is a grey area and how it is imposed varies from area to area. But the key thing is it can go back any length of tme if at that time there was a reasonable expectation of the person requiring care in the future.

So if you take someone with Dememtia, once the diagnosis is made then there is an expectation of care for the future. If someone was diagnosed, then gave away say 10k, the Dememtia progressed slowly and they were able to stay at home for say 10 years but then needed care, then that 10k woukd fall under Deprivation of Assets - as the diagnosis was made so care would be expected at some point.

Disclaimer - this is Pre caffeine and just my understanding so may be a load of bollocks.

"deprivation of assets is deprivation of assets, it doesn't matter when you do it.

That is patently absurd and doesn't tally with what I read on AgeUK fact sheet.

Are you trying to say that if someone made a gift of £20k to a relative 20 years prior that would be seen as deprivation of assets for the purposes of trying to avoid care home fees?"

clearly I was replying to a poster who said she would dispose of capital and house when she and her husband got older to avoid paying for care.

that is significantly different to somebody giving a family member a once off financial present to £20,000 when they were fit, well and not likely to need care in the immediate future.

headinhands your last post just chilled me to the bone. I had always been in favour of people having the option of something like dignitas. Now I can see some people are indeed mercinary enough to potentially prefer their vulnerable elderly relatives to die sooner rather than spend time in a costly nursing/residential home (for financial rather than humane reasons). Utterly scary, and there would need to be strict safeguards in place.

People should absolutely have to contribute to the cost of their care if they have assets. Can you imagine what homes would be like if ALL their income was state funded, particularly with all the recent cutbacks? Everyone in those homes would suffer. What an awful prospect.

Selfish and lazy people are my least favourite people. So angry right now, the angry emoticon does not do it justice!

Apologies steff my sister is long term US resident and always hearing tales of how crap it is (she's a doctor) tho thank god for obamacare. Wasn't a personal attack on you just OPs attitude

They keep wanting to give me money "so the tax man won't get his hands on it when we die", I keep saying no, all your money will go on the most lavish care home money can buy I don't want a penny of it I just don't want to end up wiping their bums when they're too old to do it themselves!*

We used to feel the same I'm sorry but were being misguided. Just because they give you money doesn't mean you have to spend it on yourself, it gives you options for their care when they need it with less red tape if YOU are funding. We were the ones making the choices and best able to ensure dad's needs were met. Social services are a shower of shite and dad deserved and got better.

If social services had their way, dad would only have qualified for help (assuming he had no money) when he was potentially a danger to himself and his quality if life had slipped badly, NOT what anyone would want.

Please, listen to your parents and get advice.

They keep wanting to give me money "so the tax man won't get his hands on it when we die", I keep saying no, all your money will go on the most lavish care home money can buy I don't want a penny of it I just don't want to end up wiping their bums when they're too old to do it themselves!*

We used to feel the same I'm sorry but were being misguided. Just because they give you money doesn't mean you have to spend it on yourself, it gives you options for their care when they need it with less red tape if YOU are funding. We were the ones making the choices and best able to ensure dad's needs were met. Social services are a shower of shite and dad deserved and got better.

If social services had their way, dad would only have qualified for help (assuming he had no money) when he was potentially a danger to himself and his quality if life had slipped badly, NOT what anyone would want.

Please, listen to your parents and get advice.

Sorry for the double post

Youre being COMPLETELY unresonable.

You expect the rest of us taxpayers to fund your parants' care so your sons can have houses?

How about this? Oh gee, I really want to live in THAT town. BUt I cant bear to sell my house HERE, so the taxpayer should just pay for me to buy a house in THAT town, because, you know, I really want to live there.

If your parent can't live in their house, because they need to be in a nursing home, then they sell one house to pay for another. Simple. Not keep one house so that your children have a gift on the taxpayers' backs.

YABVVVVVVVVU I'm sick of this selfishness

You can get the same care for free. I found that out when my mil was in a home

Ha ha ha ha ha ha You win for the Stupidest Post on the Internets

It's not free. Who do you think pays for it? No wonder wer'e in a mess.

ooops maybe it is not clear. i am hoping we have dignitas for me. i would definitely prefer to give my kids the money rather than have it all spent in a care home

as i said, my grandmother was paid for by the council once all her assets were gone, and, no, it was not a grim care home, it was fabulous, probably because the staff are properly employed/checked

its just offloading assets

some people dont have any assets to offload as they spent it all beforehand

if there is no point in thrift, i am not going to hang onto money that just goes back in inheritance tax. i am going to give it away while i am still fit and healthy, then live off my pension. probably wont end up in a care home, dont want to anyway, not interested in living to 100.

I'm sure my mil would have wanted to go to Dignitas rather than sit all day as a vegetable in a smelly nursing home (as I said earlier, the only one that would take her - so no choice there). I would say she has no quality of life. But when dementia sets in you obviously do not have the capacity to make such a decision and of course it would be wholly inappropriate for anyone else to decide her fate.

I remember a few years ago the case of a niece who took her aged aunt out for a visit from an expensive home, having previously hardly visited her. Then - oh - what a surprise - the aunt fell in a lake and drowned. The police found that the niece hadn't even made up a bed for her at her home, which kind of suggested that she was never intended to make it for her visit. There was another case locally where some people were jailed for trying to scare their granddad to death in order to preserve their inheritance. They left their online searches for the police to find. What people will do for money!

Unfortunately the whole assisted dying thing is marred by the prospect of relatives bumping off the elderly.

As someone whose mother suffered dreadfully in the last 13 days of her life I am supporting the bill in the House of Lords regarding assisted dying. I believe that people should have the option of not having to suffer in the last few days of their lives. But I can see that there is a very big problem with the mercenary wanting to protect their inheritance. I'm not sure how this can be overcome.

Actually, the worst part of the OP is not salivating over the fil's money (after all, look at Dickens for example - every book involves someone after Great Expectations). It's the notion that the bil should get a lesser share because he doesn't have children. As if he is the lesser son . Reminds me of when dsis suggested my parents make a will leaving their money in five parts - four for her, her dh + dcs and one part for me. I was 15 at the time! My dad roared with laughter.

yes, it is v sad. it means you have to make the decision while you still have good quality of life. same for things like motor neurone, because you have to be able to administer it yourself
i wish we would all just relax a bit about death. it happens to us all. why not be able to choose?

Ashtray heart, thanks for that link, DM will be very pleased to know that we will be able to get LA care for her in her own home without having to pay for it up front or us having to cover the cost.

This is the reason a lot of the elderly end up in care homes, they have the capital assets but not enough cash.

It's so difficult. So many elderly people have saved and not spent in their retirement so that they can leave an inheritance for their children, only for their estate to get gobbled up in fees. My grandfather refused to spend any of his savings on even basic things like replacing a threadbare carpet, for exactly this reason, because he was of the generation promised 'cradle to grave' care. My mum told him and told him 'dad, spend it on yourself because whatever you have will go on care home fees when you get older, it won't come to me'. But he didn't believe her.

Of course we have to try and fund our care ourselves, we have an aging population with spiralling costs and there just isn't enough in the pot without self funding. But it's so sad when you see people scrimping in order to leave an inheritance when you know there's no chance of their wishes being carried out (for good reason of course).

There's a rather large disconnect between what people -especially the elderly - expect from the government and what can be provided. And sadly the promises made in decades gone by can no longer be upheld. A lot of people fail to understand this though.

same with my family, Ginnels (no ferrets and flat caps too ) which i think is why i feel as i do. just give it away or spend it.

Ginnels I'm afraid it's not good enough to say there isn't enough in the pot, the pot simply needs to be filled. This is perfectly possible with appropriate changes in taxation. And government will.

Getting individuals to pay their own care is easier for the government particularly when they spin it to the public as an individual's moral duty, which they have done very successfully going by this thread.