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

No, it's not how taxation works. Most things are paid for out of general taxation, (you pay tax based on your income, you may have to contribute to your costs) and care is paid for out of general taxation. But for care, as well as paying for their own care, and paying out of general taxation for other people's care, they pay in care fees enough for their own care, and up to 40% extra for someone else's care.

It's not the same as, for example, deciding to opt out of NHS dentistry and go private. If you do that, you pay for NHS dentistry out of your taxes, you pay for your own dental care. You don't have up to 40% added to your dental care bill to pay for other NHS patients.

Your school analogy might be valid if a) people over a certain income had to pay to attend a state school and b) anyone paying was charged not just the cost of their own child's education but also paid toward another child's education, so that instead of paying £10,000, they were paying £14,000.

You’re the one who said it is their money
now you’re back tracking

You’re the one who mentioned how the Welfare state works now you’re back tracking.

THEIR money is money they’ve made and saved after tax. Or there’s no welfare state.
Taxes are how the welfare state works.
We pay in, we benefit.
A Cradle to Grave set up as was.

Somehow managed to post twice, though my other had been deleted. , sorry

I don't know if people realise this, but local authorities are entitled to make a charge for all adult social care. This affects disabled adults and those with learning difficulties. My LA has a 100% contribution - they allow the person to keep a bit back for essentials but they take the rest. All of it.

My daughter is 27 and has a moderate learning disability and epilepsy and can't work. She could benefit from some support from the LA. We did sign her up at one point, but they were taking so much of her money just for someone to take her out once a week so we stopped it.

Most people only seem to encounter the financial implications of the Care Act when thy are looking at nursing homes, but it applies more broadly.

@funnelfan taking my mum as an example, her council pay £700. She pays £1300. Her home doesn’t take council payers, but for the sake of this argument if they did and the true cost is £1000, then my mum would be subsidising £300pw, not £600. £15k per year. Still a lot but a third of what you are arguing.

The exact figures depend on the proportion of LA funded and self funded, but published figures are that self funders pay up to 40% more than LAs.

Agree
I think a lot do forget this, or rather focus on pensioners only.
One third of people within the SC fund are 18 - 65 yrs
140,000 people currently.

They may pay 40% more, but assuming a 50:50 split, the subsidy is 20%, not 40%. If both self funders and council funded paid the same, it would be a price in the middle.

You can’t do this. As previous posters have said, there will be financial checks. Having had parents in care and having had to sell their house to pay care home fees, I know how sad it can be for them to see their legacy diminish very quickly, but it’s just a fact of life. You’re lucky if your parents have proceeds from a house sale to pay for more than a LA home, but even the more expensive ones aren’t always that great.

This attitude that people have about people who don’t own their own home being less than people who do makes me so cross. My parents worked hard all their lives too, just because they didn’t buy their own home and instead always rented doesn’t mean they’re lazy work shy benefit claiming scroungers. Your parents benefitted from the value of their house rising hugely compared to what they paid for it, whereas my parents are still paying (high) rent in retirement and being taxed on their pensions.

lets put things a different way.

You go to work to earn money to enjoy the life you want to live
You want to be able to afford a house to be able to live comfortably to retire to hand over to your children due to the cost of housing being so expensive.
due to no fault of your own your cannot live in the house you love and nurtured due to physical or mental health
your house you have paid and fought for is now given back to the government in order to pay for your care which is mostly inadequate.

your voice is lost even though u can still have a mind and soul but people presume you don’t die to being in a care home
why shouldn’t Op want to inherit family home.

look at the way society is going. I’ll be surprised we get a pension soo not to mention those who die before collecting their state pension cannot nominate for family to receive!

Of course it is or it wouldn’t be so common. The difference is that people never used to live long enough to get it.

Your parents money should pay for their care.
Not the tax payer.
Ideally no one should have to pay but under the current rules why would you deprive them of assets but others pay?

No your maths is out as you’re missing £300. The council is paying £700 so the price to the council is £700 whereas the price to the self-payer is £1300 so £600 more. There is no place at £1k. There is either a place at £700 or a place at £1.3k. One person is paying £600 more.

£1160 is stated as the average figure for self funded care home costs.
Part of that is their state pension ( minus a weekly allowance )

They pay the rest
from savings, house sale and any private pensions. That’s it.
They pay everything once they pass the £ threshold.

Taxpayer funded fees are part state pension ( minus a weekly allowance ) and the rest funded from taxes.
Thats it.

The figures I gave are average figures set down
Not based on my relatives or anything personal
They are official figures
and they clearly show a massive shortfall in the money paid by taxes to fund half the people which is then picked up by the other half to pay from their personal savings.

Nothing about this system is right
Nothing is equal

If working age people are so against paying a tiny fraction more currently needed to make the system fair then I’d love to hear of a fair suggestion here.
So far
Ive seen nothing

Exactly! @north51
that’s just one persons case as well so irrelevant.
Lets hear what the other 299,999 people pay.
Or let’s do the normal thing and look at averages which is how Statistical analysis works.

I don’t remember reading that anyone thinks that about renters.
and I’ve been on here all along
My cousins have never bought because they chose not to, they certainly aren’t what you say.

Dentists don’t do NHS work at a loss. Why would they? They’re under no obligation to work for the NHS. They could do exclusively private work. Yes, they would like to be paid more for their NHS work, but they’re not charities, they bid for NHS work if and when it pays what they want to be paid. They’re private businesses motivated by profit. NHS patients may not be as profitable as private patients but they’re still profitable.

@north51 And yet if everyone paid the same it would be £1000 each to ensure the same money is raised. Self funders pay £300 more, the council pays £300 less.

or to use @DrPrunesqualer figures, self funders pay £1160, council pays £477:50, if it was equitable everyone would pay £818.75. So self funders are subbing the council by 1160-818.75 = £314.

That I do not believe.
Some homes are very high end, cocktail bars, minibuses and trips out.
Cinema rooms.
Large and lovely gardens.
No way will the council pay for that.

Money always buys you a better standard of living.

True and they soon move you on if you can't pay.

of course the nhs doesn’t pay dentists enough for the work they do, that is why there aren’t enough nhs dentist places any more! Every now and then there’s a story on our local news about how the population of Town X don’t have access to dentists, and there’s an interview with the surgery in a nearby Town saying they’d love to expand and provide the service but the amount of money the nhs provides per procedure just doesn’t cover their costs. Eg it’s a fixed price per filling regardless of the complexity. So every time I pay for a private filling I’m paying for both mine and half of someone else’s.

similarly, councils don’t pay care homes enough to cover their costs, so they have to take on “private” residents to make enough money to cover their cost.

the money paid for “free” nursery hours don’t cover their costs either. Many parents end up paying some form of top up fees.

this is the way it has worked for a couple of decades - I’m not saying it’s right but it’s what we (collectively) have voted for over the last few elections on the rationale that it’s more efficient to get the private sector to run key services. I happen to think that’s a very flawed rationale, but we are where we are and I can only plan for my own retirement based on that and where I think we’re headed.

Well I’m not lying Thankyou very much

If the tax funded were paying £818.75
but they are not are they !

If everyone paid the same amount at least that would be something, not great, but something.
Read the posts. It’s simple maths !

At the moment it is unfair and penalising people who are affected by some of the worst life limiting diseases, the fact that they have been categorised as social rather than medical is unfair. And the cost is incomparable to anything else in society that is a necessity not a luxury. They shouldn’t be charging anything more than a national average wage a month. £7.5k a month is unsustainable to the vast majority of people in the Uk.
What will they do in a couple of generations time when everyone rents (or at least everyone with a family history of dementia) or is no one thinking that far ahead?

Agree ( see pp, I did a calc on how much it would cost per WAperson ) no one is interested 😳
I have mentioned the growing number of renters plus
the increase in 18-65 yr olds using Social Care. ( one third of the 440,000 total )
Increasing year on year.

The current so called system isn’t sustainable. Governments and voters clearly don’t want to think and prepare for the future.