Hi, am just after some advice, my dad has for many years had savings account in his own name but recently on the advice of a 'friend', he added my mum's name to all of his accounts to ensure that that mum could access his money if she were to outlive him.
One account is his current account, only his wages, and now his pensions (both state and work) go into this account. The other is a savings account into which the only income is a monthly transfer money from his current account. Mum has never used either of these accounts and we do have old statements that prove this, but dad is now worried that the local authority might class this as joint account and want to use this to charge mum for care fees.
As the account does not require joint signatories, is there any legal reason he can’t just transfer the money into a new account solely in his name. Obviously, he wants to protect his money, but remain within the law. If this cannot be done are there another options to ensure this remains dad’s money only?
Mum has just recently moved in to residential care and had an assessment. I have not included these accounts in the financial assessment submitted to the local authority as I have only just found out what dad has done; I am confident however that we can prove that all of the money in there is all dad's as we have old statements with roughly the same balance in that only have his name listed!
We know that mum does have some capital (in theory). She has the value of half a house that can be sold eventually to pay her care fees, but whilst dad is living there this does not form part of her assessment!
She also has whatever is in her own accounts that we can’t access. The last statements we have (dated May 22) show she had around £9k.
I have no Idea why he did not discuss this with someone who might have been able to advise him better - either myself (I work in social care and before that I used to carry out assessments for people receiving care from the local authority) or his sister in law who is an accountant!!!
Can anybody offer any advice as to what we could do? I have read in a couple of places that as they are not joint signatories (mum is not even aware she is on the account), he could legally move the money to another account - as could she, but want to be 100% sure this is ok to do before advising him.