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.

Also some medical care is provided. As well as food and accommodation and entertainment

I’d love to have to answer to this.

We’ve been talking about this subject, only this week.

Neither my husband or I intend on going into a care home, but who knows what the future holds.

We’d love to put the house into our older ACs name in order to protect their disabled sibling’s home. Our house has been adapted for our younger AC and ideally we’d love him to live here for his lifetime (currently we all live together), with carers coming in to look after him.

I have no idea how it would work, but as it stands, if my husband and I ended up in a care home - and our house was sold to pay for care fees, then our disabled AC would also be put into a care home (but one paid by the LA, or CHC).

@benfoldsfivefan in our experience the LA care homes were awful. No way was my lovely MIL going into a place stinking of pee and boiled cabbage. With shared toilets and people sitting on chairs in the hallways sparked out. Totally undignified for my very ladylike MIL.

we looked at lots of care homes, and very few private will take people with govt funding. My FIL was still alive so couldn’t sell house.

MIL qualified for funding, with a hefty top up from family meant she was in a lovely private care home. There weren’t any people fully funded in there. Think that’s a myth that you can fritter away your house etc and get the same choices. Certainly not in our experience.

I'm not. I'm hoping money that I did earn will benefit my children. I find it particularly offensive that the same money will be used to keep me alive against my wishes.

The point is that other things which are a lottery - for example getting a serious illness or having one's house burnt down - on the whole either have the costs shared by society as a whole or it can be covered by reasonably priced insurance.

There's also as north-south divide in this - if the older person is in a family sized house in the SE the chances are they will still be able to pass on some money to their children the same is not true in the N. Care homes are more expensive in the SE but the discrepancy isn't as large as the discrepancy in property prices.

Finally, there is the point that up to 40% of what a self funder pays is used to cross-fund the LA funded. It is absolutely not fair that those paying for themselves should also pay towards those who aren't paying for themselves, in addition to what they're already paying in tax.

Re other things being insured

You can insure somewhat against care home costs by buying an annuity

This will cover care home costs whilst the person is alive for a set price whether they live one month or ten years.

Of course they could die after a short time and you'd have been better off not buying the annuity. But it does make things less uncertain financially

This is what my family intend to do for my mother who is on the verge of an alzheimer diagnosis. We are getting specialist advice

My best friend is going through this just now with her DM. She can’t even get a weeks respite care for her because the funding is coming from the LA. They have no spaces unless the family or mum can find the cash.

my friend was always under the impression it didn’t matter if you had private funds or not, the care would be the same and you’d be sitting next to some poor dear who had had to sell her house.

she has now discovered the realities of her parents not having their own home or savings In their later years. All their choices have been taken away and they have no access to anywhere she considers suitable for her lovely mum.

obviously if there was a nice LA place, problem solved. Unfortunately there isn’t!

This may be the most eye-opening thread I’ve seen in my history of MN. I had no idea that you could be a self-funder and live in the same care home as someone who hasn’t had property to use for their care. Not only that, but your fees as a self funder will be more, up to 40% more. than what the LA is paying. They claim this isn't cross-funding, but I don't see how it can not be, since you won't be getting anything for that 40% that the LA funded aren't getting.

I guess that is one of the risks the parents take if they put their property in an adult child's name or gift them the property.

Every case is different so people need to take care when making big financial decisions. In my Dad's case (gifting his flat to my sister and I in his 60s) he was wealthy enough to buy another property if it all went tits up. There also needed to be a huge element of trust because once we were the legal owners, we could have just sold his flat if we wanted to!

We did this recently. House is now tenants in common rather than joint tenants, and both halfs are in trust for our son. We were advised to do this, and it's all perfectly legal and above board.

Knowing the rules, the answer is to spend your money or drip feed it away to family over the years. If you choose to save it and have to pay for your own care needs when you can't manage, that's just unfortunate and the gamble you took.
If we all want to live to 105 we have to expect to pay for it.
I don't think the living costs of feeding, heating, housing etc the costs of those who can well afford to pay for these things themselves is the responsibility of others. Just so family members can get an inheritance they often don't need. That is offensive,

in my experience, private homes don’t accept govt funded people without there being a large top up from family/savings paid on a weekly basis.

so the carehome charges everyone say £1600 per week. Some people might self fund in full and others may get a contribution from govt and pay the rest themselves.

no decent care home we visited would take my MIL without a private top up. There were no spaces for fully funded guests.

If we all want to live to 105 we have to expect to pay for it. But most of us don't want to live to 105, that is a choice that is forced upon us.

You can insure somewhat against care home costs by buying an annuity But it's only "somewhat". If there were a cap to what one paid, then insurance would be easier to come by. Someone mentioned the other day that where they lived no-one was expected to contribute more than 22% of house/savings. Even being able to keep 50% would be achievable. My father has so far contributed over £200,000. He would be heartbroken if he knew.

My own experience, in case it helps anyone else. My dad gifted me his house (not in the UK) when I was in my 20s, he thought it would make the paperwork easier when he died. As it turned out, when he moved into a care home (back in the UK), the only decent options were private and expensive.

I could have rented out "his" house but in fact made the decision to sell it, and was thus hit by CGT. I then put slightly under half of the proceeds into buying him an annuity, and I'm really glad I did, because he's still alive (or, rather, being kept alive...) in that care home, 11 years on (and fees are about £60k). Capital has also run down (I dithered when he moved, and the annuity doesn't rise as fast as the fees) and I didn't expect to get much of an inheritance until recently (when we discovered that he had a taken out an insurance policy against long-term care fees which nobody knew about, but that's a different story and I have another thread about that).

@gingercat02 is this for your will? So after you die, Rather than your DS owning house at the moment?

Whilst we talk about “care homes”, this covers both residential homes and nursing homes.

Residential homes, in theory, don’t include medical care. Although care assistants will handle incontinence, washing, administering medicine etc. My dad is in one of these. It takes two people to hoist and bathe him, etc, which isn’t needed in daycare.

If it is needed, he will move to the nursing side of the care home and I believe the price won’t increase then, because the home applies for NHS funding for the nursing piece (I am not 100% sure on this).

The activities and cinema nights etc are jam. Staff costs to provide care are the bread and butter, and these won’t be vastly different across homes in the same area.

Most of us do want to live a long life. Taking pills, having blood tests, getting check ups, scans, surgeries.
The vast majority of people don't suddenly start refusing medication when we become frail and ailing. Over thirty years of nursing has taught me that.

I do agree with @MereDintofPandiculation about advanced indications of wishes etc. My dad doesn’t know who anyone is, etc. I doubt he would want to continue like this if he did know.

@gingercat02 I'm not sure your plan is as watertight as you think it is. It may be legal but it's still clearly done to avoid paying fees so the LA will see right through it.
Will you be paying market rent to your son if one of you passes away?

Ive known of a few cases where some mothers ( often widowed) have signed their property over to their children.
One lady died anyway and didn’t end up in a care home. This was a few years later.

@Paul2023 would this property transfer not make the house liable to Capital Gains Tax, whereas it may have been mostly tax free from Inheritance Tax if willed on death? Depends on value of estate I suppose.

@LadyMooMoo Leagaly, we both own 1/2 house independently. When one of us dies, their 1/2 goes straight to DS.
If we need care, then the other person still owns 1/2 the house, so it can't have a claim put on it.

My DD works for the local county council in adult social care funding, and believe me, they have access to all of someone's financial information and things like this are rarely gotten away with. They have a very large department dealing with this.

The care funding has to come from somewhere, and the LA does everything it can to make sure that it's not coming from them if someone has money/property.

There is no need for rent as the other parent still owns 1/2 of the house. It is watertight and very commonly done. We are only in our 50s, so we will hopefully be around for many years yet.
It also means that if one of us dies, the other can't leave the house to anyone else, while DS is still alive. So, to a second spouse or SC

I used to be an Older People's social worker. Our LA is pretty hot on deprivation of assets. I know several cases where families were trying to game the system and got caught

Ok, so you are tenants in common now, so each of you owns 50%, but in your wills, you each leave your 50% in trust for your son?

Or your house is now owned by two trusts, one of which has yiu and DS as beneficiaries and the other DH and DS?