How do I protect mum's money from care costs?

[MixedPeel27]

Mum has a current account in her own name where she receives her pension and she uses this account for most of her spending etc and some of the bills for the house. She also has some investments in her own name.

Dad has some policies and investments in his own name but no current account. Instead his pension goes into their joint account which he uses for all of his spending and the rest of the house bills. That has a lot of money in it now.

Dad has just been moved into a care home where he will be staying permanently at a cost of £1900pw. It's privately organised and funded but eventually of course his money will run out and we will look to the LA to contribute / move him somewhere cheaper.

We haven't had the LA financial assessment yet but we are wondering how to protect mums half of what is in the current account.

If they each had a current account we would move half of the joint account into each of their current accounts - should we move half into mum's and then say that from now on the contents of the joint account are entirely his?

Or will that look dodgy?

This suggests they automatically split what’s in the joint account.

https://carehomeselection.co.uk/joint-bank-account-pay-husband-wifes-care/#:~:text=At%20this%20point%20the%20local,two%20names%20on%20the%20account.

They automatically split the joint account but do that at every assessment. So if there was say £100k now that would be assessed at £50k each. If 6 months down the line you had spent £50k on care costs so there's £50k left it would be assessed as £25k each. We were advised to take any surplus money out of the joint account and split it 50/50 (unless you can prove a different split) into individual accounts and use dad's account to pay the care bills. You will only ba able to do thos if either your dad is still able to open an account or if a suitable POA has been set up.

They split it for assessment purposes as pp have said. There is nothing further you can do really as the LA would view it as deliberately hiding assets.

How close to the £23k threshold is he in his share of cash assets?

bear in mind that the local authority financial assessment will potentially also allow for some of his income to be disregarded to continue to maintain his share of the 'marital home'.

You can move your mums share now if you want, if only to keep things clear/straightforward, just keep bank statements and clearly label the transaction. It's a really common scenario though and splitting joint accounts is a built in function of the financial assessment.

Thanks for the replies.

There is a lot of money in there now but it will be quickly depleted so I think we should move half now.

Otherwise if the financial assessment is done in say 2 months time it will be down £16k and they will halve it at that point ...... so mums half will be eaten into.

It will all be clear and open so I'm happy we can explain it to the LA.

I would 100% split it now, your doing nothing wrong as legally half that money is your mom's.

Just be clear to LA you have already taken mum’s half out, so that all the money in the joint account is assessed as dad’s not just half.

Alternatively, every month transfer a sufficient amount to mum to make sure that she’s “spent” the same amount as dad. Then the joint would genuinely be split 50/50, and it would take care of future assessments. But that’s complicated, and LA might still have a go at challenging - they’re in a desperate financial situation at the moment.