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.

Everyone is not “conveniently “ forgetting anything. First of all: people who end up needing public assistance are not necessarily people who didn’t work hard all their lives and are, therefore, “undeserving” in your mind. In the current capitalist system a person might have worked hard at a minimum wage job or had disabled children and never achieved an asset class that enables them to pay for late life care.

Second of all inherited wealth such as houses or land are not necessarily the product of hard work or thrift. Much of it may have been subsidized (eg mortgage deductions) or been the result of luck.

At any rate the decision by the state to attempt to prevent absolute immiseration and homelessness in an elderly indigent and disabled population isn’t theft from the provident part if the population. Its a decision of all the voting population to take care of the less fortunate. Others who don’t fall into the indigent/disabled class just don’t need that help.

Neither my sister nor I would have been willing to care for our mother due to how she treated us growing up.

not if you still live in it - it's not a "gift" for IHT purposes if you continue to gain any benefit from it. (it's called a Gift With Reservation of Benefit) You could, in fact, end up paying MORE tax by doing this.
www.lubbockfine.co.uk/blog/understanding-gifts-with-reservation-of-benefit-gwrob/#:~:text=Examples%20of%20this%20include%20a,a%20GWROB%20by%20the%20donor.

I thought that! You'd get a few devoted sons and husbands doing their share, but they'd be the exception. Society has moved on. Not only are far more women in the workforce, but retirement ages have gone up, people become parents far later than they used to so many middle-aged people still have dependent children to look after, and far more of us now live at a great distance from our parents.

My parents chose to move when they retired to a place which has been lovely to visit, but there wasn't a cat in hell's chance that either my brother or I would move there to be near them. They could have moved somewhere much closer to one of us, but didn't. Now my 92yo mother is widowed and in very poor health, it's a great worry to be so far from her. There are good reasons why she won't/can't move now.

HMRC considers that very little tax is uncollected from high earners and large businesses. Most unpaid tax is from smaller firms and lower earners

I'm no lover of care home managers, but staff costs are actually massive even if they are paid near minimum wage. But in reality many aren't as care homes are forced to rely agency staff as they can't get their own staff and those are much more expensive. And you need carer cover 24/7 as well as kitchen staff cleaners, maintenance. Heating and maintenance is also a huge bill. Round our way quite a few homes have gone bust, and it's not from want of potential clients. They're only really lucrative if they are very large and you get economies of scale, and that can also have it's issues with getting enough staff and potential building costs.

I don’t think it’s feasible for them to be funded in their entirety by the state. But equally I can see it seems unfair to work hard to get a house/money and then it all gets used up in fees, whereas people who may have made different choices get it free. and to add insult to injury private payers are probably subsidising their care.

Not sure what the answer is, some kind of compulsory insurance maybe? I’d happily pay for that tbh I may look into it

Heating can’t be cheap.

I think there’s a misunderstanding that this is a provision for all that some pay for. That’s NOT what it is. It’s a safety net for those who couldn’t or didn’t make adequate provision. We pay for those who CANNOT pay for themselves and your inheritances comes AFTER the elderly persons needs.

I think what I might plan to do is to downsize and give some of the proceeds from the sale of the house to a young relative as a deposit on their own place and then use the rest to into a retirement home. Does that sound feasible? We do have to plan for this don't we?

That could be seen as deprivation of assets.

Tbh their main costs are staff. You might not like it but it’s not a profitable industry

Because people in care homes now are often not just “elderly”. Life expectancy has increased and therefore the number of people living long enough to develop dementia has increased with it. Someone with advanced dementia needs nursing care

Late to the party but, yes, how? Obviously if they drop down dead that’s fine (as you just get everything) but if they need care…how will you hide the cash and assets for the local authority? I keep being informed it’s harder than ever to hide any cash these days.

Worth noting that the state does pay for medical care but not for social care. DF went into a home for end of life care and there was no cost to us or my DM.

The fact that we increasingly live in a world in which the most significant factor which determines how well off you are or will be is how much you inherit, not how hard you work or how clever you are, shouldn't be overlooked here. For a lot of people, an inheritance is the only way that they will ever have the security of a home. That will also apply to their children. I'm not surprised that people are checking when the stakes are so high.

100% this

Very good points. It makes me cringe to see the disdain on this and similar threads to people with low incomes and next to no assets. They didn't all piss it up the wall! There's so much luck involved - not going through a messy divorce, not falling ill while still of working age, not having a child with a disability, not getting made redundant at an age when you'll never get as good a job again, not living in an area where the only big employers left are the NHS and the council, and so on and so forth.

Worth also knowing that only 2.5% of over 65s go into homes at all. Lots of people don't need social care or manage to stay in their own homes and receive help there.

wow, us poor people really get shafted, don't we? We start with nothing and end with nothing - and in a horrible care home to boot.

Will we all need to go into care homes at the end, though?

LAs can trawl back through finances looking for "deprivation of assets" for the purpose of avoiding care fees. It is a slipper slope as, if they consider this is what you have done, they can charge you as if you still have the money.
And forget any of the year stuff... it does not apply in this instance.

Well—exactly. If people put 1/10th of the effort they spend moaning about inheritance fighting to tax ghe rich and build safe, clean, subsidized, social housing people could assume a safe living standard without grabbing for assets from the dead.,

About 2.5% of us.

Both people I've known personally who worked in care homes were on minimum wage. So it's not staff.

I don’t think it’s necessarily paying for care, but it’s the extortionate amount charged by a lot of the homes. I mean the ones local to me charge anything between £700 and £1000 per week, and in some regions of the UK, a lot more, amounting to upto £4000 per month. A lot of elderly people in care don’t need medical treatment - just help with feeding and dressing, putting to bed etc. A lot eat very little food. I struggle to see the breakdown of that money. Most staff are on minimum wage with zero qualifications. How can they justify the sort of money they’re asking for!? It’s just exploitation.