Fed up of reading threads asking how they can get out of paying care home fees.

[Nextdoortomeis]

As per the title.
I'm sure lots of people would like the state to pay care home fees.
But we don't live in a fair world.
Both mum and mil paid nearly £70k in fees
yes I didn't want to pay but I also wanted them to get the best care in their later years.

Nevermind the thousands spent on monthly nursing care home support - We should be having an honest national discussion about whether keeping people with dementia going in care home settings is the best thing for them, their standard of living and who actually benefits - imho it’s certainly not the patient

Agree.
Especially when so much of what the payers are paying is actually just top ups for those not paying. Who wants to pay for randoms……

If people want advice on Mumsnet I really don’t care what it’s for .
That’s one of the reasons Mumsnet is here

If others don’t like certain threads there are plenty of others to chose from

So

What would you suggest for people with dementia or Alzheimer’s
or let’s say all the severely mentally disabled

Yeah this. ^ Of course people are going to get pissed off about it. And as for the 'I was happy for my quarter million inheritance to go on mum's care' brigade.. Really......?! You were genuinely OK with this?! Even if you were, bully for you. Doesn't mean others have to be.

Some people resent it because people who need to go into care, who have no assets or property, get free care, so yes there is a sense of deep unfairness about it all.

As other posters have said, I shall do my level best to make sure my DC get as much as possible of my money/assets before I need care. (They've already benefited from some.) Hopefully I never have to go into care, but if I do, I'm not having my DC's inheritance funding it. Nope.

I believe it’s fine to use a persons own money to pay for their own care.
I don’t think it’s moral to use it to pay for someone else’s in the home that is underfunded by the council

What actually happens when a local authority looks into a person’s finances and determines that, yes, they did deprive themselves of assets when they signed their house over to their children 15 years ago? The local authority presumably can’t make the children give the money back. The older person still has care needs that have to be met. I genuinely don’t know what would happen in these circumstances.

Hmm my dad was a sportsman, always fit. No smoking, no drinking. Dead at 56 from lung cancer. If your time is up, it´s up.

@rainingsnoring You have your opinion, I have mine.

They have to prove intent to deprive.
The Home owner doesn’t have to prove their innocence

15 years is outside the scope so social services couldn’t do much. Unless they are mind readers

There is always a chance however especially if the elderly person was already ( ie at the time of transfer ) ill in some way and it was reasonable to assume they’d need full time care in the future.

It isn’t a fair system.

If you compare it with education, people with money don’t get forced to pay for private education. Everyone is entitled to a state education.

If you consider a person with a modest job who has scrimped to buy a house and spent 25 years paying off their mortgage - only to need care and the whole house gets “taken” by the govt for the care - what was the point in working for the house?

And it’s pretty random when you consider who needs care. Some people die quickly - eg heart attack, whereas others can live in a bad situation needing care for 20 years or so.

I’m not surprised people are trying to avoid paying. It’d make me feel sick if our house (that me and DH have paid off by working like bastards) ended up going to the govt rather than our kids. I’d prefer to be put down like a pet rather than my kids not to have my house because I needed care.

When assisted dying is introduced, people who can't afford to pay for their care will be v vulnerable IMHO

So, your decision to rely on the state funding care may backfire on you

It's absolutely ridiculous that people don't want to pay for their own care and shameful that they would attempt to avoid it.

Would you walk into a hairdressers and expect not to pay? It's no different. It's a service you are receiving. Pay for it!

It's really no different than benefit fraud.

It should be subsidised I think, or at least regulated, state run on cost maybe? Some of the prices the private nursing homes charge are ludicrous. I’m talking 1k+ per week, and the ‘care’ can be questionable too. I wouldn’t put my mum or dad in one, although they are divorced so that might make one hell of a household one day 😂

I've been around a number of care homes looking for somewhere suitable for both my in-laws. Only one of them had dementia, but the other required round the clock specialist nursing, following discharge from hospital with an incorrect diagnosis. We were I suppose more concerned about them being able to get frequent regular visits, but to me it seemed there wasn't much difference in the prices of very nice homes, and places where you wouldn't keep a rabid dog. All much of a muchness.
They'd both been adamant about staying out of care homes, and as a team we kept them at home as long as we could. But honestly, I was so exhausted I'd have let someone come and take every penny they owned to be done with the constant state of high alert over every phone call, and what we'd find today.

I think it’s the fact that some people get to pay nothing because they haven’t accrued any assets but those that do have to pay, so it seems more like a fine for being more financially astute.

I think it’s more likely that people with money they want their kids to get will chose that route.
People who get it free won’t. Because It’s all free

Which in turn means there’s less people paying their own money in. Which means less free top ups for the council funded.
and round and round we go into a system that is not fit for purpose even now.

It’s actually incredibly hard not to pay if you have assets, it’s not just a question of refusing.

It is different to the hairdressers. I don’t want to pay them either so my dd cuts my hair. She’s not a hairdresser. But needing care, it gets to the stage where it isn’t optional.

Also, we receive services from doctors and dentists (well if you’re lucky) and we don’t pay for that.

It’s not like benefit fraud at all.

I hope so!

I do know there's a bit of a myth about 7 years when in reality Council's can go back much further.

Indeed this

Absolute agree

what you describe is not what I was comparing in an individual situation.

Yes they can
Although if money has been siphoned off it’s harder to prove than selling a property.

However. The onus is on Social services to prove intent to deprive.

Agree
Nursing care is very different from a standard care home.

Any service. A plumber coming to fix a leaky tap, the MOT at the garage.

Pay for what you use.

It's worse than benefit fraud as the amounts are far higher individually plus some people on benefits do it out of desperation to feed themselves. People trying to evade care home fees with such large assets are simply greedy.