Inheritance and care home fees

[Hateam]

Hello!

My mother-in-law is in a care home.

My wife, her daughter, is also in a care home for medical - non age related- issues. My council are paying for my wife's care as we have under £24500 in savings.

When my MIL dies (she's 94) my wife will inherit about £180,000.

We don't want this money going to Essex CC.

Is there anything we can?

Could my MIL's will be changed to remove my wife and replace her with me? She is still of sound mind.

Could the money go into an account in my sole name?

I am aware of the concept of deprivation of assets.

Would they really, most would try and minimise I think. In my recent experience it was actually the council that advised that it would make sense to check wills to make sure funds were not left to someone in the care system (and before people start going on at me I was not the beneficiary in this situation), but wills were changed. The solicitor advised that this is very common practice.

The alternative is you take her out of council care and use the £180,000 to fund private care for as long as that lasts her.

Otherwise no, you shouldn’t be hiding that from the council or making off with your wife’s inheritance.

The alternative is him pocketing the inheritance and the tax payer funding his wife’s care. He wouldn’t be funding the care, the inheritance belongs to the wife and the only way she can benefit from it in the present circumstance is via better care than the bog standard variety provided by the LA. You think this is acceptable ?

Depends on how much is left though doesn’t it ? The crux of the matter here is that there’s not much they can do to stop MiL’s funds being depleted to pay for her own care, unless that’s already in hand. And surely if OP’s wife is already in care, any attempt to divert funds which could pay for her care would be regarded as deprivation of assets since she had a reasonable expectation of needing care at the time they were diverted.

I can't imagine being so entitled that you think you have any scope to complain about your 'massive mortgage' (on the home you chose to buy in the area you chose to live), 'childcare fees' (on the children you chose to have) and 'student loan' (on the studying you chose to undertake).

Those are your perfectly reasonable choices.

OP is making their own perfectly reasonable choices. Not all available savings should be put into the 'public purse' - that doesn't make any sense.

Course not. What MIL does with her money is her business. These assets dont belong to the daughter so the LA cant punish her for how she decides to allocate them.

It's not deprivation of assets as they are not currently her assets. All that's being talked about here is not giving someone assets that they themselves would be deprived of by the council. Genuinely can't imagine anyone being daft enough to leave an inheritance that would just be 'swallowed up'. What's the point?

Oh, but it is.

The MIL's care needs are being funded, we don't know how but at 94 she will have to pay for some of her care needs.

The wife, who is aged what? In her 60s? Should her care needs be funded from the state or from her savings? What if she had a brain tumor in her 50's? Should her care be funded from savings/house ownership/the state? Should her husband lose his house if it needed to be sold to fund her care?

And what, when the current 30s/40s generation becomes older should happen?

The MIL is irrelevant, I believe, in all this - it comes down to what the DW should be expected to pay in the event of an early bad diagnosis.

And it comes down to whether we believe in whole life social welfare, or abandoning ill people.

And funding this, with an aging population, is something that successive governments have been burying their heads in the sand about for many, many years

You are being unreasonable.
If you don’t want the council to receive your wife’s money, withdraw her from council care and pay for it yourself.

The ‘point’ is that the inheritance is rightfully his DW’s and the only way she’ll benefit from it is using for better care than the LA provide if they are footing the bill. The council are not ‘depriving’ anyone of their assets, they are using them to fund care. Do you think it’s right for OP to inherit money rightfully meant for his wife and still allow the tax payer to fund her care ? You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see what’s going on here.

Quite.
The prospect of being so severely disabled but with a 30 year life expectancy doesn't bear thinking about. I can quite see why your mil wants to do her best to help her daughter.
︎@Hateam it sounds like an utterly tragic situation and I hope you manage to find a way to make your wife's life bearable.
Glad to see some constructive helpful replies among the spite.

And again.

The care will be the same regardless of who pays for it.

The OP's MIL could leave it to the local cat sanctuary if she so chooses. She doesn't have to leave it to her daughter and given the circumstances it would make sense to have the money in a trust so her daughter can actually gain a tangible benefit from it for the rest of her life.

Will she benefit?
Will she be uprooted and taken to another care home? For as long as the money is there? Or will she stay where she is, what has become her home, receiving the same care that she's getting now but just having her mum's money swallowed up?

Sigh... which part of that is supposed to be nuts? Most of it's in the public domain.

Just curious.

Where is your evidence of fatal injections?

Ah, right... so the rest of it is true.

The injections one is tricky. Often it doesn't get to that point if everything else works - the wear and tear and dehydration, I mean. So, okay, the spy camera in my mother's care home room was obscured the night she died, and that never happens normally. They seemed to know to change her minutes before she passed. And with Dad, well, giving him antibiotics in Epsom District Hospital, leaving it to the last few hours - as it turned out - to mention the giveaway words 'pathway' and 'end of life' - 'palliative' too I think, whereas the day before would have given the heads up. Again, they seemed to know to change him just before it happened.

Oh, we got the coroner to do a postmortem on Mum but nothing was proven and I daresay they're in on it.

There are cuttings to suggest the use of a certain drug to 'hasten' end of life - not really sure it's illegal frankly, they find a way around it. It used to be the old trick of just upping the morphine to ease pain, then OD-ing it, even the King in the late 30s had that done to him, I understand.

There is a media shutdown on this issue, however. The press does allude to it, but there is no appetite to run this story or spell it out, at least.

Oh, here's a link from a year ago, about St Helier Hospital nr Sutton.

https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/23748284.met-police-opens-investigation-st-helier-hospital-staff/

Odd, as it mentions euthanasia in the headline. The whole issue of DNR really means 'the doctor can kill you now' because otherwise I simply cannot see why it's an issue... it applies if someone has had a heart attack or a stroke and is about to die... in many cases, that isn't likely to happen to an old person, they just hang on anyway and if they die, they die. They were insistent on it at Epsom Hospital even though we were there at all times... Cheerfully overruled us when we said no to DNR. We got Dad out fine the first time even though they raised a rumpus and got nasty. Second time, he was ill so he had to be on a drip - and suddenly died on the third day. Plausible at the time, don't get me wrong, but it was a bit quick in retrospect.

Our Universal credit is being stopped. Rules have changed.
We put some money into a trust for the children when they are 18. It now counts as our own personal savings, even though the money is for them.

We are talking about the mother in law leaving any left over money to her daughter via a vulnerable person trust. It’s not fraud. **

@MistyMountainTop the OP would not lose his home to pay for care, as a home that is occupied by a spouse etc is disregarded in a financial assessment until they no longer need it. So stop with the hyperbole.

Well then, use your own money . The best life YOU can , by using someone else’s money is hardly anything to be proud of .

DNAR's absolutely have their place for older people. Performing CPR on a frail elderly person is just brutal and likely to be futile. If there isn't a DNAR in place then the staff have no choice but to start CPR. I've known a couple of district nurses who've had to do CPR on patients who absolutely were not suitable for resuscitation but whose families had refused to allow a DNAR notice to be made for home. The patients died anyway, but in their final moments had their chests battered.
In hospital families should most definitely be part of the discussion but ultimately it's the doctors who decide if a DNAR is needed and with good reason.

Labour abolished the (proposed for 2025) cap so don't bother looking. I think it was announced at the same time as removing winter fuel allowance for pensioners.

If your wife's needs are medical, not social, NHS continuing care should apply, although it is, by all accounts, tortuous and difficult to get.

You'll find there's a lot of hate on here for the elderly and those needing care. There's a lot of jealousy and it's a race to the bottom.

‘When my MIL dies (she's 94) my wife will inherit about £180,000.

We don't want this money going to Essex CC.

Is there anything we can?’

The post is not about a fraud to stop mother in law paying for her own care. It relates to the format in which MIl leaves her money in her will.

As things stand they money has not gone to DD and there is no legal compulsion to make it vest in DD. As she has not received it it will not be a deprivation of assets.

The most advantageous way to deal with tjis is via a perfectly legitimate vulnerable persons trust created by HMRC / the Lord Chancellor to deal with this scenario to encourage people to provide a bit extra for their disabled loved ones without it getting swallowed in care fees

Don’t take this out on OP he is legally allowed to arrange for this to happen. Get more upset about offshore family trusts where millions are transferred and never see the taxman not £180,000!

Do you live in your father's property?
Are you over 60?
If so the property should be disregarded for care home fees.
https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/care/paying-for-care/paying-for-a-care-home/do-i-have-to-sell-my-home-to-pay-for-care/#home