DM is homeless and penniless

[Pottlee]

I don’t know where to post this really, so apologies if it’s the wrong place.

My mum has been carer for her mum for maybe 5 years. Grandmother has now sadly passed away. Inheritance wise she has left a small amount behind, which is split between her two 60 ish year old ‘children’ (my mum and my uncle) - around £5-10k each. Mum and her brother have a fractured relationship but showed themselves to get on for the sake of their mum. Not sure it’s going to be as hunkydory now their mother has passed.

Now to the main point - my mum has nothing, like nothing to her name. She has no home (lived with her mum as carer), no money (other than the small inheritance) and no income at all. She has never worked so had made no contributions. She also had never claimed any benefits. The home she lived in with her mother will be sold and that money will go to an equity release company and to pay off a load of other debts.
What on earth happens to her now?
My uncle says she’s my responsibility now, but I would hate for that to be the case in that I don’t have room for her to live at my house, and harsh as it sounds I don’t want to become responsible for her for the rest of her life - hats off to everyone who can do it, but the idea of me having to care for her the way that she cared for her mum is just a no I’m afraid. We are close in a way but don’t get on in another. I couldn’t live with her. It would make my life unbearable and no doubt spell the end of my marriage because my DH couldn’t tolerate her daily either. My 2 DC love her but daily it would be disastrous. She is very lazy, judgemental, negative and nasty. And as I said would be able to make very little/no financial contribution.

So 1. Is she really regarded my responsibility now? 2. What should she do with regards of somewhere to live (she has no money for that) and income for the rest of her life? Is she not entitled to anything as she’s made no contributions or claimed anything at any point?

I’m aware I may come across as heartless because I don’t want to take her on so to speak, but I do want to help her set herself up somehow if she can. I’m just not in a position to be able to offer a place to live or financially.

please if anyone can advise who she can speak to or what she can do. Thank you.

What's funny about it?

Indeed!

You're talking bollocks @Luddite26

I was born mid 50's and when I retired at 66 had 38yrs NI, the only years I didn't work were years when I was studying. Worked p/t when the dc were small then back to f/t when they went to school. I can think of a single friend who was a SAHM. some of the DC's friends were - but they were all the wealthy ones, who "lunched" 😆 - not my tribe.

Sure.

Agreed. I'm late 60s most women of my generation only took a few years off work (if that) to care for children.

Well I was a teacher in the 80s. I wasn't like that and neither were most of my colleagues.

Edit: I'm agreeing with @MrsDanversGlidesAgain again.

I am 41. My mum worked, she would have been 68 this year.

Her mum (my Nana) worked and she would be almost 100 if she was alive.

My Nanas mother worked. My Nanas Mother in law also worked.

On my Dads side his mother worked as did his grandmother.

I don’t know anyone who I grew up with whose mum didn’t work.

I don’t know why people seem to think women didn’t work.

I went to school in the 80s and we had varying ages of teachers. Mainly female. From quite young to coming up to retirement age.

Right up until I left education in 2000

I'm intrigued to hear what everyone did for childcare? I know @IHaveNeverLivedintheCastle had a nanny but nobody else has said their childcare situation.

Ok I think we've pretty much all agreed that the reason the OP's mum didn't work was not because women of her generation were SAHM.

The point is the OP is surely in her late 30s or 40s now, so her mum has had a very long time to go back to work.

She spent 15 years abroad with a man, it fell apart, and she came back here with no job and income.

It is rather odd that the only equity left over from her gran's house is around £20K, to be shared between 2 siblings.

When did she hand her house over for equity release @Pottlee ?

Does it make sense to you that there is so little money left for your mum to inherit?

What amount was your gran drawing down each month to live on?
Did she not have any pension?

Too many gaps in this.

Oh @Luddite26 Are you still going on about this?

Honestly, it's getting boring.

I went back to work initially doing evenings. Eventually, I went back 4 days a week when my youngest went to nursery.

I had friends who had family nearby to do some childcare.
Others used a childminder.
There was a private nursery near me but it was for the over 2s only.

So yes some women did stay at home till their child started a state nursery at 3+, but then they went back to work. They didn't spend the next 30 - 40years not working.

I don't know what my teachers did for childcare. It never occurred to teenage me to ask them, not that it would have been any of my business.

I'd imagine they pretty much relied on family.

Some of my mums generation had au pairs

Also teaching fitted round holidays and you could get away with taking your children into the school

I went a few times with her

It was very different

I’d imagine a teenage single mum like the OP’s probably wouldn’t have had an au pair…

No probably not but it was more a comment about childcare options in the 70s/80s and au pairs featured

My mother worked in my school. So she was off when I was off.

She later, also took up some night shifts at a supermarket for extra money.

My Nana had a cleaning job that she did in the early hours of the morning.

My great-grandma had a pub. My grandad was raised there. Between her and her 2nd husband they ran the bar and looked after him.

My Dads grandmother was a housekeeper and if her daughter, my grandmother went to work with her and worked in the house when she was young. My grandmother then moved to a coastal village when she married. She married a fisherman. She prepared fish for sale and transport. Again the kids went with her or (from my Dads explanation) they were left in the care of an older cousin or left unsupervised.

I was a latchkey kid.

My mum lived with her gran.

My dad sat at his mum's work until she was finished.

My aunt was raised by her 12 siblings.

FIL was down a mine at 14 so I expect his parents weren't that present!

MIL raised herself poor lamb. Very very bad childhood.

Women have worked while expectations of childcare were VERY different.

My mum was a teenage single mum. She worked. No au pair. But we came home from primary alone. 5p on the bus so that was a treat.

Your mum is of working age. Unless she has some sort of disability she will need to look for a job at least for a few years. If she remains unemployed, she'll have around £80/week for groceries and utilities provided she's making an effort to get into work.
As for housing, she'll need to look for a one bedroom rental or apply for social housing. As she's over 55 she may be eligible for sheltered housing...so a self contained flat with a warden around. Her inheritance will be factored in if she's awarded benefits.

What's confusing me is why you're discussing who's responsible for her. She's a grown woman who has presumably run a home and cared for your nan. I'm 56. I have to work and pay my bills and look after myself.

@Luddite26 I don't know your age, but you're asking questions about working women as if this was 100 years ago (many of the children of the women posting here, who are in their 60s, have children now in their 30s) and you appear very young.

Did your own mum not work?

We'd had a woman prime minister since the mid 1970s.

Women did the same for child care then as they do now, other than there being very few if any nurseries taking children as babies.

So yes, many women did take 2-3 years off, or they worked evenings or weekends (part time), or they used family.

I know women in professional jobs who were able to work from home (yes, even back then.)

A good friend of mine was in a science role (not in a lab) and worked mainly from home for decades.

Some women had partners who worked from home or who could be at home when necessary to help with childcare.

I'm not sure where you are so disbeleiving.

Your reply to @EmotionalSupportWyrm 'Sure' - seems sarcy as if you don't believe her. My own working history is pretty much like hers.

I do wish that @Pottlee would come back and engage with the equity release questions.

Even for a house with little equity, it seems unbelievable that there is only £20K max available. Either the grandma has been 'scammed' / ripped off OR @Pottlee your mum is not being honest.

If the house was only worth £100K (and the average house value is now around £250K), it beggars belief that an elderly woman spent that amount of equity in her old age .

What was the house worth and how long ago did she sell it to use her equity? And why did SHE not have a state pension ?

Not one of them had a child whatsoever
I think the clue is in the fact that they were nuns 😂

Also, a spinster is not a woman unmarried 'beyond her prime' as there is no definition of 'prime'.

If your mum was at school in the 50s and 60s, she must be in her 70s now or older.

Did she never work?

Did YOU never work?

Your questions about women working and childcare, going back 30 years, is quite odd because you are surely the same age as those women.

She won’t have spent anything close to that. She didn’t sell the house, she used equity release (i.e. took out a mortgage that doesn’t have to be repaid until death). The issue with equity release is that someone takes out a relatively small sum of money and (usually high) compound interest starts clocking up and the amount snowballs.

If she took out £100,000 20 years ago (quite possible if she was in her 80s when she died), she would owe around £265,000 at 5% and you can’t get as low as 5% - from what I can see it is between 5.5 and 9%. At 9%, to borrow £100,000 20 years ago, she would owe £560,000.

Even if she only took out £40,000, at 9% she would owe £224,000 after 20 years.

£40,000 over 20 years is only an extra £2,000 a year so she could easily have spent it.

Obviously if the equity release was more recent, less money would be owed but the grandmother doesn’t have to have been scammed (except inasmuch as all equity release is fairly scammy) to have no money left.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was no value left in the house and the amount coming to the beneficiaries was from their mother’s savings.

@CrabbiesGingerBeer Isn't equity release where you sell your house to a company so you can live off the capital and when you die, you may get something back? (I do know of a couple in their 90s now, close friends of my family, who sold their house to a company, for equity release .)
These friend's house was theirs. They'd paid the mortgage off decades ago.

@CrabbiesGingerBeer There are two sorts of equity release. This is from Age UK. The people I know did the 2nd option.

• What are the different types of equity release?

• Lifetime mortgage. This is the most common type of equity release. Like a traditional mortgage, it's a loan secured against your home, but the money doesn't usually need to be repaid until you die or move permanently into residential care.
• Home reversion plan. This plan allows you to sell part (or all) of your home while you stay living in it. The reversion company then gets a share of the proceeds when your home is sold – usually after you die or move into permanent care. They don't pay the market rate, so your estate might be significantly reduced if you die shortly after taking out the plan.

No, it’s where you take a certain amount of money out of the house by way of what is effectively a mortgage but don’t pay a penny until you die.

You don’t get anything close to the actual value of the house, just a small percentage.

I’ve just put the value of my house (£260,000) into the calculator below while pretending to be 65 and have no mortgage and came up with:
Lowest interest rate plan£36,400 at 5.25%Average interest rate plan£66,300 at 6.19%Maximum release plan£92,300 at 8.60%Medically enhanced plan£102,180* at 8.53%

https://www.moneyrelease.co.uk/Equity-Release/Max-Release-Calculator/

You can see that I would only get a tiny percentage of the equity but would end up having almost all of the value of my house go to the company not my heirs.