To think its fine for people who took out an equity release to be held to the contract they signed

[Lemith]

Daily mail sad face story. www.dailymail.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-3254070/Thinking-taking-equity-release-Meet-retired-couple-pay-Aviva-135-000-spend-years-together.html

Yes having a health condition is upsetting. But they should of read what they are signing and thought about the future. I have a family member in a similar situation and they keep moaning about being done over by the bank, however it is them that through their own free will signed up to the scheme!

There are two points here:
Firstly, most people realise equity on their properties when they sell them, either to upgrade or to downsize. Anything else, such as equity release, is essentially a further charge on the property - secured loan and has to be paid back at some point.
Secondly, as with all loans, terms and conditions apply.
What I do not understand is, why this couple or anyone in a similar situation, cannot sell their property, repay all monies borrowed or owing and use the rest to fund their sheltered accommodation?
Perhaps these people do not understand that they have actually "spent" the money from the equity release and won't get it back, unless, of course, their property has increased even more in value in the interim.

Baconyum - I think it's more that older people expected one of them being alone after the other dying, and for one to be ill at the end for a year at most, but not the potential decades worth of care home fees, that's a relatively new experience (particularly as 20 years ago, the NHS still had dementia wards that were free at the point of use, if you wanted to go in a care home, that was the 'private' option, there was a free state one until relatively recently). These schemes do seem to be created on the assumption you will be able to live independently until death of one partner, that while care fees might be needed to be paid, it's on the assumption it's for the 'surviving partner' - the other one having done the care for the first.

These complex situations relating to long term care are relatively new with technology keeping people alive later so more are going to get this slow death conditions. The baby boomer generation are beinging to plan for care fees and it not being 6 months max, but potentially years. The generation before didn't expect that to happen.

This couple do seem to have been feckless with their approach to their home as a money bank, but they do also seem to have expected this to be a mess they made that their DCs had to fix/sort out after death, not a problem they would have to deal with themselves. (the fact their DCs are angry about it suggests they hid what they were doing from them and planned to let them find out after they'd died).

Pendent - the lure of the equity release schemes is that the older person is lead to believe they won't have to feel the effect of having sold a portion of their property. If they'd managed to do what the scheme intended, both live independently in their home until death, then it would just reduce the inheritance their DCs got, not effect them in life. And if one died first, then the other needed to go in care, well, there'd just be a smaller pot to pay for care home fees, and the state would have to take over sooner, this has gone wrong because she needs care that he can't provide. The "I wouldn't put my partner in a home, I'd look after them myself" declarations when you are in your 50s doesn't account for not being able to lift and care properly for an elderly partner when you are elderly yourself.

It's amazing how many people think they'll be healthy right up until the end.

Actually, thinking about it, how many times have you heard phrases like "spending the kids inheritance" from baby boomers or products aimed at them? People really don't think they'll need to spend their money in later life themselves.

He was an accounts manager and yet failed to read the small print. nope, no sympathy here either. He had no excuse not to know better

No sympathy hear either.
In my previous job I dealt with the exit of contracts. You wouldn't believe the amount of times I heard "but I shouldn't have to pay the early termination fee, I didn't read the contract, I didn't know about it"
Sorry, you read before you sign. If you end up losing out because you didn't bother to read what you were signing that's not my problem.

No sympathy for people who make poor choices like this when all the information is available for them if they bothered to check.

I think there are genuinely a few people who aren't smart enough to understand stuff like this, and with them I sympathise. There's also been some genuine misselling, outright lies really. But there are some people who just heard what they wanted to. It doesn't take much sense to realise you can't both live in your house and spend it without there being a price to be paid somewhere along the line.

We never knew this would happen

No: and nor did the life insurance company know, when they sold someone whose estate I handled, an index-linked annuity in 1960 that inflation would go sky-high and that he would live into his nineties. But they still had to pay out.

These things are mutual: you sign on the dotted line and you aqccept the consequences - for good or ill.