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.

Yes, I think the reality is that everyone should pay. If we can't afford to fund everyone's care then nobody should be funded for some conditions.

By topping myself when it gets to that point.

In our family a 600k house was sold to fund care - 450k went to the care home over 8 years. A lifetimes scrimping and saving to pay the mortgage, bills and repairs and the person in the next room was there at the taxpayers expense. My relative, had they still had their marbles would have been devastated.

Personally, I’d rather book myself into dignitas than spend the best part of a decade being shuffled between bed and chair in the same room, but the government don’t seem to be keen on that being legal here!

Believe me, I tried. We moved my father in. Watching him 24/7 almost broke us. My youngest was a baby at the time. My husband fell asleep and he went into the kitchen, lit the hob and set fire to it.

He tried to jump out of a window while I was running him a bath and the final straw was him trying to feed my child a lithium battery as he thought it was a sweet, again, when I had my back turned in the same room cleaning up a toilet accident he’d had.

My children weren’t safe, he was too unpredictable.

Its not just your lovely old dad sitting in the corner of a room drinking tea. Dementia turns them into an entirely different and dangerous person.

You shouldn't have had to pay, that should have come from their own assets, and then the government steps in when it gets to a certain threshold.

If that's possible I hope that loophole is closed.

The problem is that cancer sufferers have only a limited life, for a dementia sufferer it can be decades!

My DM lived with dementia for 10 years, we had carers at home at first, the her last years were in a care home. There were other residents in there who were over 100 years old!

Yes. I have told the kids if it ever comes to it (me having to go into care) just shoot me first

This!

Lots of people say that though. I do. My dad did, but you don’t realise dementia is happening to you.

He had moments of lucidity early on when he said he wanted to kill himself - guess what, that makes you a suicide risk so they medicate you up to the eyeballs
and put you under deprivation of liberty so you can’t.

Absolutely barbaric.

Absolutely this. Unless you’re a millionaire- you will be sitting next to people who is having their care paid for by the local authority.

Are you sure the money went towards an actual house deposit? I say that because when my dad gifted me £100k for mine, the solicitors asked him for proof of where it came from and 6 years of bank statements showing how the balance accrued.

If there were any large cash deposits he had to provide evidence of what these were for, even for small amounts under £5k.

I find it hard to believe that a solicitor would request to see this woman’s bank statement and not question why £40k has been transferred to her, what it was for and why. They have money laundering to consider too so the £40k bank transfer would definitely have raised flags and the solicitor would likely have asked for a letter or proof from your husband stating why he gave her £40k and the word “gift” would also need to be mentioned in that letter as any mention of it being a loan, would mean that they wouldn’t accept it as funds for a deposit.

Yes it's a deprivation of assets but in reality doa is rarely investigated.

However is does really impact people on things like second home tax, second home stamp duty, ability to claim benefits, the amount they can borrow on a mortgage. It's not an easy out and to be honest it's very rarely worth the hassle.

If I didn’t have kids, I would have done that. The suffering my dad went through for years, not only with dementia but at the hands of people who were supposed to be caring for him.

if I didn’t have young children, I would have gladly gone to prison to have spared him that.

It's not just being able to choose which care home. It's when as well. Rely of LA funding and you are likely to be left at home sitting alone in your piss and shit waiting for one of 4 brief carer visits. Is not spending money on your own care more important than that?
And noone gets it totally free as a minimum they will be giving up most of their pension short of @£30 a week to cover toiletries, clothes etc. There are plenty of people who have worked hard all their lives for low pay so not managed to accumulate assets and that will include a lot of the people doing the bum wiping. What's supposed to happen to them?

Probably the people whinging how hard they've worked, and want to dodge paying their way regarding care

When MIL was in a care home (severe dementia) she was not entitled to the nursing care component - which is tiny anyway. Her fees, ten years ago, were £1500 per week. The rate paid by the council for the non-paying residents was £500 per week. I had colleagues managing care homes who knew the figures. The actual cost per resident per week was somewhere in the middle, depending on the home.
Also, you can't just leave your relative in there and hope for the best. You have to be on top of everything from the laundry, through medication, glasses, hearing aids. Everything goes missing and has to be replaced over and over again. It is hard work. I bought good quality practical clothes and sewed name tapes on everything. All vanished within a short period of time as did her shoes. We bought toiletries weekly. I felt desperately sorry for residents who had no family to look out for them.

People are living with cancer for much longer now - treatments are getting better at keeping people alive and okay for much longer and having occasional respite care in a hospice.
Dame Esther Rantzen announced her terminal cancer a few years back had treatment and it is only now that she is beginning to worsen according to her daughter (although perhaps there is another treatment available for her).

There used to be NHS geriatric beds.

And that needs to be stopped as well in my opinion.

YABU to think people won't worry or try to avoid. Money is tight for everyone at the mo. Life/the world is unfair. We all try to do our best.

Good.

The thing with dementia is alot of the care needed isn't medical. The NHS isn't going to cover my mum switching off the power to the central heating controls and the phoning British Gas because it hasn't come on. It's not going to cover emptying mum's freezer because she's jammed it so full she can't open the drawers and so she's propped the door open (to de-ice the drawer so it opens in her head) and ruined all the food in it. It's not going to clean mum's house or do her laundry because she's forgotten to.

And that doesn't need to be stopped in my opinion 😁

I worked on one of those wards in the 1970s. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.