to wonder how much inheritance

[hubgryhorse]

You need before you can safely assume you’ll still get a chunk despite potential care home fees? I read all the time on here that you shouldn’t rely on it etc etc and nasty comments are made about how you must be hoping your relatives dies 🤔

I always thought most people had an idea of what they may expect later on, whilst knowing there’s no guarantee for all sorts of reasons!

But with estates of 500k, 1mil, 2mil surely you can expect that not to be totally used on care homes?!

I think if it's over 1.2m you can assume you will get something. But obviously depends on how many siblings.
I don't know anyone who has spent more than 300k on care home fees.

Are care homes really that expensive in England? What do you do if you can’t afford it? Here it’s based on your income, but the maximum rate is £150 a month (in the entire country). That is including care, rent and meals.

My grandparents assets and savings were over £500k and all of it went on their care.

People are always going on about care home fees. No one in my family or acquaintance has ever been in a care home but to listen to discussions on here about them you would think there was no escaping them.

I assume at some point taxes will go up as the country is broke & they can't target income much more.

They have outings and things too, for those who are well enough.

If you are paying £1,000 per week, that's £52,000 per year . You'll get through £120,000 in just over two years .

I also think care in the home will have to be personally funded. Some relatives of mine were paying 2k a week for live in carers. They went private because there's a shortage.

Same with NHS, a relative paid 50k for a private operation as the waiting list was 18 months.

Think both scenarios will become more common.

Sometimes people are lucky and they never get Alzheimer’s or break a hip and have the perfect bungalow and family that don’t work.
when my grandparents got ill all their children were still working hard to pay for a roof over their heads. It started off with my grandfather having a heart attack, then breaking his hip, and then my already blind grandmother broke her hip and then my grandfather got Alzheimer’s and my grandmother dementia. These aren’t illnesses that can be managed in the home very well. My auntie went to live with them but they were too ill to care for and she’s a nurse!

Our inheritance was a few hundred between three siblings, my mother was in a care home with dementia for over ten years. Every penny she had scrimped and saved for over thirty years from Dad's income and then his pension went into the pockets of greedy care home owners (with a pittance for the carers and caterers). I would really rather she had spent every penny of that nest egg on wine, men and song than what actually happened to it, which is making already rich people even richer.

They are eye watering.

My dad was in one for the last couple of months of his life, as despite being on the end of life pathway we couldn’t get any hospice support (latter stages of pandemic and no formal diagnosis) and after over 12 months of caring, my elderly mum and I were broken.

He had a small single room, bed, wardrobe, TV, and sink (he didn’t need an en-suite as was bedbound and incontinent by that stage).

Because he was end of life the costs were covered but that alone was £1200 per week.

The larger rooms with en-suites and doors to the garden that you’d probably want if you were more able and looking at a longer stay were in the region of £1700+

The private care homes can be yes, but people who do not have the means to self-fund have their fees paid by the local council. However that means they get the say over which home the patient goes into, which will usually be the cheapest and therefore not always the best/most suitable.

DH’s grandparents both went into a home in their mid-90s about 10 years ago. Their house was sold for about £250k to cover costs. DH’s grandmother died after a year and his grandfather a year after that. By then there was a total of about £30k left, which was split between DH’s dad, his brother, DH and his sibling.

If someone has under £23,000 savings and no property the state will pay but they will have to pay back their state pension aside from a very small amount of 'pocket money' . They will be limited to which homes will take them . If there is a choice if home but they choose to go to a slightly pricier one then their family will be required to pay the difference .

If someone has their own property but no savings - the property will need to be sold (unless their spouse or dependent is still living there )

It is honestly something I don't think about and can't ever imagine factoring the possibility of an inheritance into my financial plans

I am thinking you would need parents who were super wealthy (multiple millions in the bank etc) or parents who had set up some kind of trust for you to realistically be able to assume you will benefit from a significant inheritance

Thanks all for your replies. That is so much money..

@MintyCedric I’m sorry about your dad.

If you take over the care personally you can cut out the care home fees, that should boost your inheritance quite considerably.
It would take a lot of effort on your behalf, but think of all that lovely money that you’re longing to lay your hands on.

I don't know how much. My dmum has the money from the sale of the family home plus what she inherited from my grandparents in savings, as she now rents.
I think every penny will go in care home fees, more than £300000.
Fortunately, we always assumed we would not inherit, but it would have really helped my now adult kids.
.

A friend's mum was in a care home for 5 years at £1k per week so approximately £260k.
If they hadn't let her house out & had sold it at that point there would have been nothing left......

catheter training, pain injections, nappies and pads and spoon feeding, 24/7 care for possibly 5+ years. If you have a job and a mortgage and family to care for it’s almost impossible. Was easier in the old days when women didn’t have to work.

YABU because no one really knows for certain how much, if anything, they will inherit. For some, it could be Care Home Fees that erode an 'expected' inheritance and equally for others, there could be large sums 'squirreled away' that they had no knowledge of.

Too many variables to be confident about any inheritance, expected or not.

The sooner euthanasia is an option the better. I definitely don't fancy that future .... doesn't sound much fun for the carers either, but how awful for the person suffering

Thanks - it was a rough time.

The room he was in was spotlessly clean and he was well looked after, it was just very small! It also was on the ground floor at the front of the home which was great because I could go and wave at him when he was in quarantine for the first couple of weeks.

Certainly not something you’d wish for a loved one though.

I'm an only child and my parents are divorced no no additional children and houses of their own.

I am not counting on any inheritance tbh. They live in the USA where it's extraordinarily expensive to be elderly and have any health conditions. I know one of them inherited money and has always told me how lucky I'll be in the future etc but that money will almost certainly end up being spent on the other parent if I need to support them.

She was certainly unusual, but my DM was in her care home for 8 years, until she died at 97. Luckily my DSis and Dbro who had power of attorney, had taken out an annuity to cover the difference between her income and the fees, until she died.

I hadn’t really thought she’d last more than a couple of years (she already had quite bad dementia) so thank goodness for the annuity. And it’s a tribute to the excellent care she received that she lasted so long.

The annuity provider lost their carefully calculated ‘bet’ (made after studying her medical records etc.) at roughly the 4 year mark.

In my experience people with estates and investments of a few million choose much nicer care homes, as they should, it’s their money!