AIBU to try and prevent care home fees? Advice appreciated

[Watermelonsuns]

So my parents are elderly, both have health issues but managing well at home. My mum in particular would struggle if something happened to my dad. Recently a friend's parent had to go into a care home and as the parent owned their own house and savings they are self funding and the fees are crazy.
AIBU to try and find a way to protect my parent's property and savings in order its not all gone in care home fees in the last years?
Someone has suggested moving their property into my name but surely that would be an obvious way to avoid fees and would look dodgy? Is there another loop hole im missing? Aby advice from someone working in this area would be appreciated thanks

Maybe look at renting extra care housing through their local council, they need a referral but renting with 24hr care on site is a much better option, retirement flats are a rip off and very hard to sell and you still end up paying for carers.

Exactly and who is to say that if you’re not a property owner you don’t work hard? Not all those who rent are scroungers who doss about all day. Some who choose to rent over buying may have invested their money in other assets. Owning a house isn’t the be all and end all it used to be but if you do and need care then you cash it in to pay your way. That’s what your asset is for. Talk about cake and eat it.

I’m going by what we’ve ( and our cousins thinking about it ) experienced and by what we were told at the time by the council.
( that’s Swale, Kent and Herts )
That’s all.

I mentioned that on previous posts it’s personal experience and advice we received both legally and by the Council.

They would not meet the criteria.

Not unreasonable to not want all their money to go to a care home at all.

As others have pointed out how you go about isn’t easy. And the number 1 priority is ensuring they get the best care.

I know someone in this position - house has been sold, £7k a month going to the care home. Of course if every penny needs to go on care they’ll spend it but it is a bit galling to see decades of work paying off a mortgage go to a care home.

I sympathise with what you’re trying to do.

Wow! Do you think you are the only person in this situation? You are basically asking for ways to defraud the public purse. Deliberate deprivation of assets is a criminal offence by the way. Clearly your motivation is to greedily protect your own inheritance. But savings, pensions, assets are all meant to be used to find old age when someone finishes working, not to be passed on to family.

Actually, the seven year rule only applies to inheritance tax. Your local authority, should they so wish, can go back further and still declare there has been a deprivation of assets.

A way round this is to put the home in a trust, but there has to be a valid reason for this, and not just to avoid care home fees. My friend has put her home into a trust with her DD as the trustee. She did that because she is estranged from her DS and didn't want him to benefit from the sale of her house. She had to give a full explanation of her reasons. However, she could have probably achieved the same outcome by just adding a full explanation of her wishes to her Will.

Agree
You just need to say why
cant be bothered with maintenance is enough.

There are no hard and fast rules - unlike the gift rules that fall out of inheritance tax after 7 (or 14 years). That is what makes it hard to do. References with regard to a 7 year rule for DoA assessments are incorrect.

Anything that is perceived to have been done to enable the donor to claim benefits (which is what free care home provision is) can be unwound. Any action has to be taken before there is any remote prospect of the donor requiring care. Any property transaction, however it is couched, between elderly parents and a child will be looked at. Giving a house away under market value throws up another whole can of worms regarding IHT as well.

The OP needs to take proper advice before doing anything.

My family's current experience is that all our local homes are full with a waiting list.
So plenty go in to care homes

If there is one person still living in the jointly owned home it cannot be included in a financial assessment when the first person needs residential care. Its irrelevant how its owned.

Who pays for the care of Working age people needing adult social care.
One third of those who receive this funding are in that category.

I think people forget Adult social care is for everyone over the age of 18.
The request for funding has increased since Covid and continues to do so within this category.
How can that continue?
What should the country do?
Whats the most suitable and equal policy for everyone?

No but if that person dies with no care home fees, that persons half of the children’s inheritance is protected after the second parents death.

I’m not sure why pps keep mentioning council care homes. As far as I’m aware, there are very few of those left.

But having looked at so many care homes for DM and FiL, I can attest that the most expensive are NOT necessarily the best. An aunt of dh was very unhappy in a very smart, expensive one, where thankfully she needed to stay for only a month. The staff were surly and miserable - I visited twice and saw it for myself.
Very smart, ‘Homes and Gardens’ decor, is IMO usually there to impress relatives who are choosing. Cosy and homely, even if a mite shabby around the edges, but with cheerful friendly staff, are to me far more important.

Yabu yes. Why should other people pay for your parents care so you can have their property?

Yes agree

The problem with this is that should the parents go on to live for quite a while, the money then runs out, so the parents have to move to a home that takes local authority funding. That would be quite distressing for them. The average length of time a person lives in a care home before they die is two years, but my friend's DM has been in a care home for five years now. The average cost of a care home (without a nursing element) is about £72,000 a year, so if she was self-funding, that would have cost £360,000 by now.

Have you thought about approaching the local authority about a deferred arrangement until your mum’s property is sold or (to put it bluntly) she passes away? They will cover the care fees until then and you pay from the proceeds of sale. They do charge a setting up fee and interest. But may be worth you looking into. You can arrange if you have POA and it’s in your mum’s best interest.

@tippytoesy

Please stop perpetuating the myth that people who self fund receive better care than those who are funded fully or partly by the local authority.
It's not a myth though is it.

There are private care homes that are leagues above those the council use. They are only available to the self funded. They may accept part payment from the council but they are much nicer than fully council funded places

My mum could walk but not safely. She couldn't manage at home on her own even with carers coming in. In my mums residential home none has dementia. They need help with every day things. They will not fall as they have help with walking.

That's all well and good for you but for myself and the vast majority of others, most people don't have that sort of money left over each week to club together for care home fees. Plus my parents would be appalled if we were paying for their care home fees when they had enough sitting in equity in their house to pay it off.

I can't stand all this "it's what you do for family". Family relationships are complex and not everyone is in a position to help out financially or physically and many family relationships have simply broken down. It isn't one size fits all.

And anyway the OPs parents have the funds in their house to pay for a care so I'm not sure why you are thinking other family members should fund it if and when the time comes.

@Gloriia
A trust fund is deemed the best way
Ensure all partners of your kids have to sign a waiver ( put this as a caveat )
The sooner the better
See your GP for a health assessment before
Copy the assessment with all Trust docs in a file for the future, just in case.

These things go in cycles. Back in the bad old 1970s, people were tired of "being held to ransom by the public sector unions" (as they saw it; although there was a degree of truth to it) . My Dad worked for the council roads department and he used to complain how long it took anything to get done, except on Sundays when they used private contractors. So there was the obvious attraction that private companies do tend to be a bit more efficient, at least in terms of not allowing dead wood to hang around. And to be fair anyone who works for a public sector organisation even today can tell you about colleagues who are either never there because they're "off with stress" or who do bugger all when they are in the office.

So Mrs Thatcher, daughter of a small business owner, decided — after reading some articles by various right-of-centre economists — that the private sector should do everything. Yes, the private sector would expect a 15% margin, but since they would in theory be 50% more efficient, that's win-win, 35% saved (*) for the taxpayer, better and quicker services for the users.

Also, her marketing people came up with the brilliant idea of getting the public to buy the shares. Older readers will remember the slogan "Tell Sid" for the British Gas (I think it was) privatisation. It was going to be one huge share-owning democracy with all of the directors answerable to Sid (and Doris).

Unfortunately, capitalism is a bit smarter than that. So the various privatised companies went from being owned by Sid to being owned by hedge funds, and giving worse and worse service while paying more and more to their shareholders. But because they were mostly local monopolies, unlike Alfred Roberts's grocer's shop, the customers couldn't go anywhere. In effect, instead of public sector unions holding people to ransom for a 15% pay rise, now you had a legally mandated transfer of the taxpayer's money to smiling men (and a few women) in suits, who told everyone how "entrepreneurial" they were while being nothing more than rent-seekers.

This has led to a problem that is known in economic theory as "moral hazard" (basically, "pay me more money to provide social care or this old lady will die of neglect, sorry about that but business is business"), and despite the fact that is was inevitable given that the government did not structure the privatisations to avoid it, it was not sufficiently taken into account by the people who imagined that they were turning the UK into a nation of little businesspeople.

In my area the homes with LA funding and private are the same.

DF had to go into a home for end of life nursing care (not social care) and the local authority paid. It was the same private care home as fee paying social care residents were in and he got very good care, and had a peaceful death as a result.

There are funded residents in private care homes as well.
I come across this at work.