Finances -separation and Divorce

[Fitdayking]

Hello All,

I am posting on behalf of a dear friend who is married to someone with Alzheimers and Dementia. They are both 70 years of age and have been married 17 years having both had previous marriages and both unfortunately lost both of their previous spouses to cancer.

My friend, whom I will call Albert has been married to Sarah (fictitious name) for 17 years. Albert sold his marital home and moved into Sarah's marital home with her mortgage being paid off. Albert has contributed towards the household bills and spent at least 100k on renovations on her house using his money.

They are now looking at Sarah having to go into some sort of care potentially in the not too distant future. Albert would like to move out of her marital home and purchase his own residence. However, he has had various opinions, some of a legal standing to say that he will not be able to retrieve any of the money he has spent on the home back as it will all need to go to her care home fees. Does anybody know if this is correct?

Albert has put half of his money from the sale of his previous marital home into Sarah's home and will have potentially lost this. Her will states Sarah's home is to be left to her 4 children.

Can anybody help? I feel he needs further legal advice.

This is complicated.

If they are married then the house is an asset of the marriage, regardless of who is on the deeds.

If they get divorced then the general starting point is for assets to be divided 50:50 although this can change depending on other factors.

So they would need to look at all the assets and divide them up.

Does Sarah still have capacity? It will get very complicated if not.

If they devorce before either of them dies then the house, as a marital asset will be split. If DW dies before the devorce then it's a bit complicated but I believe he would still have a case to make a claim based on significant contributions and also dependency on the asset to not be homeless. It will be messier though so best to devorce asap.

Quite right it doesn't. Albert knows that he perhaps needs to get out of the marriage now to protect himself otherwise of Sarah moves into a care home it could get very messy. It would mean at the moment Sarah's family would need to continue her care until she moves into a care home. Albert is finding it all very difficult in terms of caring for Sarah and despite support from various organisations etc. he's very much dealing with it all on his own.

I think Albert would just want the money back what he has put into the house instead of half of the house but this is unlikely to happen once Sarah goes into a care home.

If they're married and both living in the house, it doesn't count towards her assets for care funding. If he's moved out that will make it more complicated, not less.

The will is a separate matter, and will depend how the house is held.

There are possible issues within Sarah's family that could also cause problems once Sarah is in a care home. I don't believe Albert would want to ordinarily divorce Sarah but to protect his financial position going forward he is debating whether this is the best option.

Yes, I understand there is a POA for Sarah (her son I think).

How does he think divorce will protect his finances?

The inheritance tax exemption will be lost, but that won't matter because he'll also lose the inhertiance. The house is already protected by him living in it. All assets in his name remain his, and only half of assets (excluding the house) in joint names are counted in care assessments.

Trying to negotiate a fair and legally watertight financial split for divorce with someone who doesn't have capacity would be a nightmare