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.

Several of my relatives have wondered how much the SS people we dealt with are getting paid and why they haven't lost their jobs.

There is no accountability for failure at all. And it would have been better all around if we'd known from the start they weren't going to help - we could have cut out a lot of waste of time away from our jobs. That would have been clear and we could have taken action earlier before harms to the relative themselves and their spouse actually happened because SS promised things that didn't deliver.

Yes, we could probably bring a court case but all the money is going in care home fees and who has the energy for that after losing a family member to dementia? They know most people won't sue.

If a person needed in home care years in advance of a care home it is quite easy to prove it would be reasonable to assume they would need care at some point in the future.

However.
For many the need arises quickly and without social services care at home before.
It would then be hard to prove.

Do the people here who intend or have 'signing' their house over to the children or created trusts or other instruments long enough before being diagnosed with care needs then have evidence of paying a commercial rent that is declared by the children for income tax purposes, similar in principle to what they'd need to do to avoid IHT gift with reservation? If not, are they relying on some advice that they'll be able to rely on some clever approach that is 'signed off' by a clever barrister?

FWIW, have seen people in other circumstances get into hot war relying on advice from entities who have a commercial interest in getting customers to sign up and pay fees in the short term and the consequent risks get crystallised in the long term and the costs fall to the customer not the advisor.

Exactly @nahthatsnotforme

Plus the difference in ££ between the two is huge

A self funders average cost in England is £1266 x 52 weeks = £65,832 / year
fees for a person not paying in England is £439.75 x 52 weeks = £22,867/ year

Thats a difference of £42,965 every year

Why is a person funding themselves forking out £42,965 more!
For exactly the same

Imagine going to a restaurant or doing your weekly food shop and being charged 3 times more than the person sat at the table or in the queue next to you. !

If your property is signed over to your kids in full or part there will be capital gains tax to pay. Either every year by declaration or at the point of sale. If the kids aren’t living in the property.

There will be no IHT to pay on this. Just capital gains tax.

Why should somebody else's children (ie. working taxpayers) pay for my care to enable my children to have an inheritance?

If one spouse ( A ) remains in a family home it cannot be considered as an asset for care Home fees for the other spouse ( B ) that’s in a care home.

However
If A dies or has to also move into a care home then as they are no longer living in the family home it will be used to fund care home fees for B and A if they are also in a home.

Well it wouldn't be deprivation of assets if the care need came about quickly and suddenly and after the asset had already been disposed of. No one would be needing to prove anything in that scenario.

However even if the person wasn't receiving any care from adult social care beforehand even just a diagnosis of Dementia on the GP records that pre-existed the assets being disposed of would be sufficient for the council to begin to query if deliberate deprivation of assets may have occurred.

We can access GP records, DWP information, land registry information etc.

You may run into issues as well for example trying to claim that you didn't anticipate you may have care needs if e.g. you had also been claiming attendance allowance during the time the assets were handed over, or someone had been receiving carers allowance for their caring role for you.

I think we need to stop looking at savings as inheritance.

The elderly person is alive and needing care.

The question is why should one person pay 3 times more for the same service as someone else paying nothing just because they have savings.

Lets not forget our taxes and our childrens taxes pay for all welfare in this country whether we use it or not.
You don’t get a reduction because you don’t have kids thinking you shouldn’t have to pay for education.
You don’t get a reduction in taxes if you use private medical care.

We all pay for stuff we may never need to use because that’s the welfare system.
At the same time we can all spend our excess money on whatever we like, cars holidays…that’s our choice. We have made that money so we have that choice. Or we could chose to save it. That’s our choice.

However. Once we become pensioners and need support apparently our money isn’t ours any more. Its up for grabs because apparently everyone thinks pensioners don’t deserve to have autonomy over their own savings! It’s taken and we are only allowed £30.15 a week spending out of it.

Imagine if all our children were told they aren’t allowed to spend their money on what they wanted bar £30-15 a week because people who don’t have as much deserve it more!

If we really strip back the thinking on this that’s a communist attitude. Take it all away from some and hand it all out to others!

Nobody wants to end up in care homes. People aren't necessarily more accepting of them, people accept that there comes a point when dementia patients NEED 24hr care.
It's too much for a family to cope with.

Well you could say the same for any terminal illness, cancer patient, should they get their care on the other people's children's taxes?

We either have cradle to grave care or we don't.

https://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/directory-record/78380/deliberate-deprivation-of-assets

for those interested this is ONE council’s successful claims of deprivation of assets. It happens and is noticed

the cash rich can buy care needs annuities which are an up front cost but pay for care over the lifetime period - at home or in a care home. My mum’s care annuity cost £350k in 2018. Her care costs were £75k per year until her death in early 2024. But the purchase of an annuity took that cost out of scope for IHT which kept her estate under the £2m threshold so the cost-benefit was significant

financial planning for care in complex and needs specialist advice

Trying to get a definite answer from social services is a task that makes you lose the will to live.
I raised several questions about funding - asking which care homes DM could remain in once her money ran out, top up costs etc. Trying to get an answer was impossible kept getting fobbed off and referred to leaflets which basically said nothing and referred to other leaflets which then referred me back again to the first leaflet. They kept wanting to contact them by phone - I wanted email as I wanted an audit trail.
One useful thing DM had given money to her two older grandchildren for a specific purpose and had written a letter to go with the cheque. When it was the turn of the younger grandchildren it was only fair that they should be treated the same - I actually managed to get permission from the power of attorney people and the local authority that she would not be depriving them of assets. Although again took a lot of persistence and several emails.

@CarrotVan see that proves my point exactly those with serious wealth are able to mitigate the fees and probably pass plenty on to the next generation long before care homes are necessary.

It's People with £200k or less who end up getting their savings completely wiped out.

Like I said if you’ve already got an illness or you’ve got carers it’s not hard to prove but without those it isn’t.
A lot of people will transfer assets whilst well. That would be the sensible thing to do.

When my FIL passed away he gave his half of his assets to my dh.
He also requested that my MIL pass her share of the property to my dh as well. Her choice of course but she did decide to and she had no pre existing conditions or anything. She just decided to do as her husband had suggested.

When she went into a care home there was no question the property was up for grabs and only her other assets were taken into account.
Why?

Because she told them she wanted her son to have the family home as requested by her husband. ( this was about ten years before she needed care)

There was some think tank or other which was proposing a capped lifetime gift allowance to your dcs. Imagine having to detail every Lego set, pair of trainers, share of family holiday…

The ideal candidates for Dignitas are those suffering from advanced dementia. But the bugger is you have to have capacity to make the legal decision, by which time it’s too late. Furthermore we all say we’re going to do away with ourselves, but mil for example hotly denied there was anything wrong, with fil desperately enabling her.

It must be really awful to have worked hard, built a lovely home you want to pass on to your children & then through no fault of your own have to sell it to pay for your care. It must be. However, I think it has probably served you well having a lovely, secure home to spend your life in & raise a family in. Fewer and fewer people will have that now, I certainly can't imagine being able to own my home any time soon, so I am paying rent to a private landlord (who is lovely!) but actually the home I live in would be sold & I would be homeless & I know lots of people who are in the same situation. So having assets to sell may well be less of an issue for people in the future but I'm not sure it's of benefit to the care sector. Most of those having to sell homes now will have hugely benefitted from better affordability - one parent staying at home etc. A far cry from today's lifestyle for most families. It must be devastating & I understand why people don't want to do it though, it's really sad to think of your life's work being sold to a stranger to pay for what often isn't even great care anyway.

*edited to fix spelling error

Imagine going to a restaurant or doing your weekly food shop and being charged 3 times more than the person sat at the table or in the queue next to you.

This is a false analogy. A better comparison would be between renting a car or booking a hotel & paying the full retail price versus someone travelling on company business paying a fraction of the retail price because a corporate discount has been negotiated. Local councils get the care home corporate discount but individuals don't

Incorrect.

Councils don’t pay enough to fund the running of the home. They rely on self funders to top up the fees.
Homes rely on the extra £44,000 plus without it they would all be shutting down.

Further more.
If one considers the bulk buy corporate funding theory then as every pensioner on a UK pension is equal councils should be factoring in all of them for funding.
Not picking and choosing who gets the right to the bulk buy benefits .
That like saying one manager gets to pay one third of a hotel cost whilst the other manager has to pay three times the value.

@Needspaceforlego I’m just saying that I think those figures will change, for whatever reason, possibly expressed clumsily by me. I know no-one wants to use care homes.
DH was diagnosed with Parkinson’s 10 years before any SS involvement but it wouldn’t have been an unreasonable assumption that at some point he might need to access care and, if it were to be state funded, then deprivation of assets could presumably go back as far as diagnosis.

Agreed about the CGT after the new owners losing the relevant primary residence allowance. Are you certain about no IHT - if no arm's length rent is paid and HMRC consider it a gift with reservation? then any IHT 'planning' may be defeated and, if over the relevant thresholds and spousal transfers, wouldn't IHT be potentially in play as well?

FWIW, when acquaintances who do not have significant wealth (enough to make trusts and FIC's viable in their own right and care home fees to be relatively trivial) have said they've 'taken action' in some cases what they've signed up to looks much worse than doing nothing. Two of which had a fourth party advisor taking an ownership stake in some circumstances. Advice from a decent solicitor was quickly sought by one.

One of my solicitor acquaintances see care home fees protection and IHT aversion as a mess with mis-selling on the horizon.

"it's really sad to think of your life's work being sold to a stranger to pay for what often isn't even great care anyway" but also after a lifetime of the benefit of living in the home too. are many buying houses to pay for care fees without living in them first or renting them out for a return.

IME it used to be that rent would be cheaper than the equivalent mortgage with the difference equating to the capital gain but now rent seems to be more expensive - many posters seem to forget about the living in the home and the averted rent.

The corporate rate is not available to private individuals. If your care is funded by the council you pay nothing not three times what a private individual pays.
Not all care home residents are pensioners so whether or not you receive a UK state pension is irrelevant & in any case not all pensioners are equal by any means.

This is just an explanation of the current situation not a justification. My preferred option is a National Care Service integrated into the NHS so no individual pays for care home fees. We need to pool the risk so that the minority of people who do need residential care get the cost paid by all of us.

We pay for children care for children who are too young to look after themselves why would you not expect to pay for care for the elderly who are too frail to look after themselves?

Savings you pass on to your children after you die is inheritance. It should be view as exactly that.