Person going into care home thinks they have avoided selling their house to pay fees?

[LindorDoubleChoc]

A distant relative has just sadly gone into care (dementia). He is not married but has a long-term partner with whom he has two adult children.

His family seem to think he won't have to sell his property to pay for the fees because "he has put his house in his son's name". I'm trying to think what this means and surely if it were that simple everyone would do it?

Are they misunderstanding the system? Or how could they have achieved this? They are in England.

Depends where it was done and his partner might have a lifetime's interest.

Also how long ago

Depends how they have done it and when.
It could be deprivation of assets and the council will come after the son for the house

My understanding of this is that if the local authority think that a move like this has been pulled to avoid paying care home fees, then they will treat it like a deliberate deprivation of assets.

Depends when it was done

Of course they will. So many people thinking this is a clever wheeze nobody has ever thought of before 🙄
It doesn’t work.

Actually, it doesn't depend when it was done - when the financial assessment is done the local authority can go back as far as they want to determine if someone has intentionally deprived themselves of assets. But the answer is that avoiding care fees through putting the house in someone elses names, or putting it in trust doesn't work (a very few exceptions may apply, but increasingly rare I believe)

They sound very niave and obviously haven't done any research.

The 7 year rule only applies to inheritance tax IIRC. As far as care home fees go there’s no limit on how far the council can look back. If they think there is a case of “deliberate deprivation of assets” then they will come for the money.

Depending on how the ownership of the house is set up, if it is 50% his partners then they can’t touch her share. In that case they’d put a charge on the house that when it is sold they will reclaim costs from the proceeds.

Depends on the reason and if it was done before any condition that suggested a care home would be likely was evident.

AgeUK have a really informative page on all this.

Also a house wouldn’t be sold from under his DP if she owned a share.

His partner apparently has no interest. Do you mean "when" it was done rather than "where"?

There are a lot of loop holes to get around this. However a lot of people don't seek the correct legal advice and mess it up. It depends how it was done. If he was clever about it then it may actually be true that they have avoided the care home fees.

My understanding isthat if he lived in it and it was in his sons name he should have been paying rent to the son.

To those who think the LA will always find out - is that a bit hit and miss depending on LA (as with school place fraud) or absolutely 100% guaranteed? Would it be possible to hide/disguise it in any way?

Define “clever”, in this scenario?

No, op. They’re allowed to investigate, and they will.

That's not 'good enough' for want of a better phrase.

Someone in my family did this a good fifteen years before a care home was needed but the local authority wanted to know why they had given their home to their adult dc when they had homes of their own.

Why would someone give their house away and then pay the person they have it to money to live in it?

The parent ended up in a terrible home, not one they would have chosen, and the situation was investigated which was upsetting and then the house had to be sold and the fees paid.

A lot of LA employ someone purely to do this. I heard a lady who did it being interviewed on the radio a while ago

It depends when (and how) it was done. The only way to find out is to look at the paperwork, and get legal advice.

The local authority will be far more motivated in saving themselves several hundred thousand pounds than they will in ensuring that the right tiger mum’s child gets a place at an oversubscribed secondary school.

Yes. But do all Local Authorities?

If he actually sold his house to his son and the son has the deeds then I guess that's that. But then he'd have a lot of cash in the bank?

I suspect that's not what they actually mean though. His partner is in a precarious position because she has no financial interest in the house (toxic relationship) but I don't believe that means the house won't have to be sold.

I'm interested because this is a distant relative but my Mum is now selling her house to pay care home fees. I'm fine with that actually - who else is going to pay? the country is broke. I do think the threshold should be considerably higher than £23,500 but that's for another thread.

However, me and my brother (who will inherit anything left from her estate if she dies before it is all spent) are fairly on top of the law around all this (or so I thought) and if it were possible to do what this other relative claims to have done then either his, mine or my Mum's financial advisors would have have advised us to do so.

My husband and I are seeing a financial advisor soon, with the idea of signing our house over to a family trust - we're in our early 60s, no health problems as such, but want to avoid our AC having to sell our home to pay for care fees, in the future.

Some people may get away with it but it’s impossible to say whether you would have. My Mum looked into it and her Solicitor warned her not to as it might not work.
He said that there are lots of firms who claim they can help you to avoid care none fees but they mostly can’t and if the LA comes after anyone it won’t be those firms.
Its not a good idea

Are you not worried you'll end up in a bare minimum council funded care home?! My nan was in one of them cos she had no assets and it was SHIT.

My father did exactly this with my brother. And they got away with it too!