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.

https://chpi.org.uk/blog/the-hidden-profits-behind-collapsing-care-homes/

Why their debt is really just debt to another company they actually own.

Feel free to continue to imagine that with more money you get to buy better care. In fact you just get screwed over either way but it costs you more.

If your partner still lives in the home it is safe.we have just had thus,with my parents and they could not come after tge house

I used to work in LA brokerage by the way and the LA use all the same xare homes that are privately available, just where we could find a place.The LA of course negotiate a much better price and often the family just pay a small top up

@countrygirl99 , very true.
It was still fairly early on in her Alzheimer’s - TBH I was still trying to kid myself that it was just old-age forgetfulness - when my DM, who’d always been very clued up about finances, phoned her bank about something.

And could not remember, literally the instant she’d put the phone down, what they’d said.
That was when the dreaded penny dropped.
The other sign that day, was that while she’d normally have been in a terrible tizz about such a thing, she was quite unconcerned - because she’d forgotten almost immediately that it had happened at all.

@EmmaGrundyForPM she stayed in her house for as long as physically possible. She's not far off 100. She is physically frail but mentally 100%. She had been in and out of hospital for v short stays, and discharged via another care home, then to home. The last time it happened, she transferred to a better care home at her own expense. This all took place over a few months. Prior to that she had been fine to look after herself at home.

She made a very sensible decision.

My dad’s trigger for going into a home was repeated falls. He would fall at 3am, my mum would call the neighbours at 6am to get him up. It couldn’t go on. Yes, they had a pendant falls service but all it does is call an ambulance for you and monitor progress of the ambulance. NHS ambulances are massively overstretched and an elderly person on the floor, largely unharmed if bewildered, isn’t a priority.

they were still managing in the day with care visits to wash and shave dad, so probably wouldn’t have been ill enough for LA funding. But the situation was unsustainable

You can’t do it! It will be seen as deprivation of assets

That's extortion!!! £10.41 per hour when half of those hours they spend asleep!

Near us, there's a wonderful care home which is like a little indoor village. Each resident has their own 'cottage' with American style porch & mini garden, there's a Main Street, a pub, hairdressers, 3 restaurants, a bakery, a corner shop, coffee shop/cafè, dress shop, community centre with bingo and other activities and then in the middle, are some 'gardens' with real trees & grass - all of it is indoors. Then there's an outside wraparound patio & gardens. Everything in the village is completely free and the fees for that place - which is known as the elite care home in the entire county - are £1100 per week.

Not if they don't need care for another 10-20 years

Otherwise no one could ever gift a large sum of money at any point in their lives without it being deemed deprivation of assets

Staff need to be there even when asleep. In case of falls, residents needing help to the loo etc.

Not if they don't need care for another 10-20 years

Otherwise no one could ever gift a large sum of money at any point in their lives without it being deemed deprivation of assets

I'm not sure that there is a limit on how far back they can look.

Found this useful link

So, with so many care home residents, how many people does it take to look after them all? The number of care home staff in the UK is almost 700,000 people!

That makes the care home resident to staff ratio roughly seven staff members for every five residents.

I know this will include admin staff etc - but wow, this is a high ratio and explains a lot about costs

https://lottie.org/care-guides/the-number-of-uk-care-home-residents/

It's scarey isn't it. Mum had mice in the kitchen. We discovered it when I went to see her with my DS who doesn't live in the UK. We spent all afternoon cleaning her kitchen cupboards. The next day I phoned and she'd forgotten all about it and didn't understand why I'd arranged a pest controller as she didn't have mice.

There isn't

But they won't go back the whole lifetime, way pre illness.

Otherwise no parent could ever gift money for a child's house deposit, for example

I think it depends on the amount and the intention. A £20k gift towards a house deposit when the child is 30 and the parent 60 and still working is a very different situation to signing over a £300k house at the age of 70, even if the 70 year old is fit and well at the time.

£10.41 per hour is pretty good - when you consider minimum wage is almost the same figure and care homes (and other minimum wage employers) are struggling to recruit.

Considering the number of carers required (mine needs two at least with her for anything now), plus kitchen staff providing food for all meals and snacks, loads of laundry every day, high heating costs, building and grounds maintenance.

You still pay nursery/childminder even if your child spends three hours a day having a nap! The point is that you're paying for someone to be there to answer the falls alarm in the middle of the night, call an ambulance, deal with trips to the loo or wet beds or whatever. Staffing levels will be a lot lower overnight but they still need people working then.

I used to do housekeeping in a care home with about 20 residents. I was amazed at the number of staff to keep such a small place going. each day 3 housekeepers 2 to clean and 1 in the laundry. 2 maintenance guys. 1 cook. 1 manager. 1 bookkeeper/ admin person ( she worked part time) 1-2 physios 6 carers plus a senior carer who mainly managed everyone else/ oversaw the dining room. Plus another 4 carers on night shift. Obviously people don’t work every day so even as a small home they had over 30 employees.

If they are fit and well and have no expectation of needing care then it doesn't matter how old they are or how much they give away. It doesn't matter if they are working or not.

There isn't a special moral code to this.

Anyone who thinks a LA won’t go after someone who gave away/ put their home in trust when in their 60’s or 70’s is a fool.
You would need a very good reason to have done so.
Even married couples going Tenants in Common with their house to ‘save’ half the property are playing a very dangerous game for whoever dies last and their beneficiaries.

The rules are completely clear.

There's no reason to think, if you are fit and healthy, that you will need care. And that's an end to it.

The LA needs to prove that you had a reasonable expectation of needing care and so deliberately gave away your assets to avoid paying for it. Being 70 is not 'a reasonable expectation of needing care'.

He may have if there is someone in his house over the age of 60 that lives there. Otherwise no they may have to.

My mother gave her house to me and my sibling when she remarried so that we would inherit rather than it being divided with step sibs. Step dad sold his home when they married and gave step sibs some of the proceeds then, spent the rest himself. We fully expect that we might have to use Mum’s property if she needs a care home. Transfer wasn’t done to avoid care fees, but because it was her house with my dad and she wanted us to inherit it. Tbh I think it’s a bit iffy morally to try ruses like this to avoid care home fees. It means taxpayers, including relatively badly off ones with no hope of owning a home or ever inheriting, will have to pay care fees for people with assets, sometimes substantial assets, who could afford to pay their own. Local authorities are really strapped for cash so the more people cheat the system the more pressure they are under and services come under threat. I know people want to inherit and leave legacies and the current system can be seen as penalising the thrifty. Difficult one.

If the house is in his son's name they will check to see if he is paying his son rent for living there. If he hasn't been doing this he probably won't be considered to have actually given it to his son. They're not stupid!

This might have been answered already-apologies if so, I did have a look but couldn’t find it ~

If a couple are married but the mortgage is only in one person’s name and that person has to go into care, does their spouse get to stay in the house? Would they need their name on the mortgage to ensure the house isn’t sold from under them?