Joint owners or tenants in common?

[GnomeDePlume]

I will be paying off my mortgage in the next few weeks. After that I want to put the house in joint names with DH.

Should we be joint owners or tenants in common?

DH and I have been married for 35 years. For most of that time I have been main earner so most assets are in my name.

My concern is that we should both have assets in case there are care or carehome fees to pay.

Any thoughts please?

The main reason to hold as TICs rather than jointly is if you want to have two separate half shares and generally people will do this (as you suggest) to protect half from being eaten up by care home fees if one of you does go into a care home, or if they don't want their share of the property going automatically to their spouse on death.

If you're happy for your share to pass automatically to your DH if you were to pass away (and vice versa) you may as well leave it as joint. You can always sever the joint tenancy later down the line, many people do this as they age.

@bloooooberry thank you.

We dont want to avoid care fees but want to make sure that each of us has a share of the assets to be used to pay for care.

If I have to go into a carehome I want to make sure that DH wont find that he hasnt any assets left. Half the house value would leave him enough to buy a small home and would give me enough to pay about 3 years of carehome fees.

Gloomy thoughts but both of us have had parents go into residential care so want to be prepared.

So if the house you both live in is owned as joint tenants, if one of you goes into a care home while the other is still living in the house, then the house doesn't get taken into account when calculating contribution to care home fees. So the one living at home gets to continue living there and it isn't sold off by the council to reclaim fees. If the surviving spouse then wants to downsize, they have the full value of hte house to spend, or spend part of and put the rest in savings.

However, If one person from the marriage dies and the remaining person ends up in a care home, then the council can reclaim all fees for the second spouse from the sale of the property. IMO that's not a bad way to use up your own money - it is on your own living care needs after all.

If the house is owned as tenants in common, then 50% of the house value is considered to belong solely to the person in care, and while the council won't kick you out, when the house is sold (often on the death of the first or second spouse) the council will claim back the fees from the 50% of the value of the house that belonged to the person in care. If the surviving spouse wants to downsize, they might only have half the value of the property to spend on a new place , depending on how much is left after the council reclaims their fees.

When the first TIC dies, and hasn't been in care home, then their half of the house value is held in trust by the beneficiaries of the will, with the remaining spouse holding a lifetime beneficial interest to continue living in it.

Bear in mind that if either of you ends up in a care home, if you limit your care to only what the council will pay for, you will not be in as nice a home as one that you might be able to afford out of your own wealth.

My intention is to create a potential pot of assets so that each of us can pay for care/carehome if the need arises. The worst case scenario is that we both need a carehome in succession. What I dont want is to leave the one who needs care last to have no assets to pay for that care.

We have both had parents in carehomes so are well aware of the differences in standards in the sector.

We have wills in place, each to the other then down to DCs. No trusts, no trying to protect assets so that they go to DCs. IMO the biggest favour we can do our DCs is to keep things straightforward.

Once the house ownership is sorted we will then do LPAs then Advance Directives.

People tend to make Wills and Plans for the distant future: advanced old age.

But your Will needs to be for the next 5 years, and then review.

What if something happened to you in the next couple of years? Are you happy for everything to go direct to your DH )and vice versa)? Especially as men in particular tend to remarry quickly after bereavement and often to a younger woman who then outlived him.

Would you be happy for all your assets to go into a new marriage rather than to your Dc?

As TiC you can leave your share of property to your Dc with a life interest to your DH.

Life interest could be for life, for a set number of years, until remarriage or whatever.

Only 20% of us go into homes. 100% of us die…