I think my mum has been scammed for a trust

[miniworry]

I've just spoken to my mother (age 67) who has informed me that in July she used a company to put her house into trust with both my brother and I as the beneficiaries.

When I asked to see the trust so I could just read through it (my brother doesn't yet own a house so I wanted to see if this affects his qualification as a first time buyer) my mother then informed me that's she's actually had no paperwork at all about the trust, she was just sent forms and then signed them. Apparently the company told her that she doesn't need a copy as they keep all that info here'.

My stomach immediately dropped and I asked her how much she paid ... £4000 🥺 I've since looked at the title documents from the land registry online and I can see that she is still the legal owner.

The company is viva planning and even one look on their website gives me the hunch it's not legit.

She's been scammed hasn't she? What are the immediate steps I can take now? My worry is she has no idea what forms she completed so only knows what she's signed over!

The Land Registry has huge backlogs at the minute, if they have changed anything with them it will probably take 6-12 months to update on their online records.

OMG this is BRILLIANT!!! 🤩

Im going to speak to my old mum about this. Thanks!

The same argument could be made for why we pay healthcare for people who could fund it themselves from their own assets. If we accept that everyone should have access to care and healthcare then whether this is in their own home, a care home or a hospital is irrelevant and all should be treated equally whether that be state funded or a requirement to fund it privately.

Why should someone who happens to have a specific type of illness like dementia which means they need to be in a care home have to pay for it but someone with different health issues who can receive this care at home get it for free?

Ultimately healthcare and care need to be within the same Government department (NOT managed by LAs, although they could implement it logistically but with central funding of centrally agreed packages based on uniformly applied criteria. LAs should have nothing to do with financing of it, as with education, as pushing these roles onto incompetent LAs as statutory responsibilities is simply a way for Governments to displace blame without providing the necessary funds, to people who are totally incompetent to carry out the financial management of it because of the low expertise of their staff).

We need a fundamental rethink of funding which treats all healthcare/ care equally, something more akin to the French or German systems which for a not much higher percentage of GDP have far, far superior quality of treatment and patient outcomes. Ditto the approach to education.

Local Authorities should be nowhere near the funding decisions on such matters because they spend inordinate amounts of public money trying to circumvent the law rather than providing the statutory services and are completely incapable of administering the financial and legal systems involved due to the lack of appropriately qualified and experienced people working for them.

Totally dysfunctional, like most public services in the UK.

Did you manage to get through to them?

I would alert your mother’s bank to this being a fraudulent transaction. There is no way that a trust can be established without you having signed the papers. Use your POA also to put a maximum limit on her transfers/ payments daily so that she can’t be scammed into sending payments to other scammers. Also alert the Land Registry of the situation and put an alert on the property so you’re informed of any potential changes to the record.

As someone who does the financial assessments for care fees, I can say that some of those points are incorrect. Homecare isn't free either, unless it's funded by health and health can also fund a care home placement. It depends on the person's care needs. Otherwise, both homecare and a care home placement are subject to a financial assessment.

A financial assessment based on income yes, but they don’t start trying to sell your assets or put a charge on your house to pay for it if it’s care in the home, do they?

As for the funding via the NHS, that is a bureaucratic nightmare that the NHS resist as much as possible, also leading to bed-blocking and wasting resources and delaying simple operations because there’s no bed for a patient to use in recovery because people who shouldn’t be in hospital are there waiting while LAs and the NHS argue about who should fund care. The criteria are arbitrary at best, and not administered consistently. I can’t see any logical or rational argument why this should not be one Department with responsibility for all of it; it appears simply a way to shunt off a problem onto incompetent LAs with statutory responsibilities they cannot fund and are incapable of administering competently anyway: a blame displacement tactic with no benefit in terms of administration or provision of good quality services.

We urgently need to reform our tax system, state pensions system, healthcare and social care funding to make these functional and financially sustainable, and free up money to invest in productive areas of the economy that will generate growth like education and infrastructure.

If she has only lost £4k then she has dodged a bullet. Actually putting it in trust would have ended up being far more expensive and problematic down the line.

I don’t think this is correct interpretation. Be very careful about taking some of the advice on the thread at face value.

It’s likely it will no longer be in your mother’s name if it is in a trust.
If anyone is interested there’s a podcast on the whole putting properties in trust to avoid care fees, and why it’s not a good idea podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-meaningful-money-personal-finance-podcast/id581790263?i=1000718543303

I can’t thank you enough for this. This is exactly our situation and it’s a massive wake up call.

You can get an alert from Land Registry if anyone tried to change anything regarding a property in England @miniworry https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/

And this is why our council tax is going up so much and councils are in the red coz of the aging population care fees . There needs to be a total overhaul on care home fees paid for by the tax payer .

You buy your home and then when you can no longer live without support , you sell it to pay for help as an old person , I don’t see what the problem is and I would rather my parents be looked after than us get inheritance if the times comes .

it’s selfish . Society needs to start paying for themselves and not relying on everyone else.

For those saying that it's not possible to see via the Land Registry if a property has been placed in trust, how can the OP find out?
There must be lots of vulnerable old people doing this without telling their families- how can we find out if a property has been placed in trust or not, if we can't find paperwork? When in the house selling process would it become apparent?

So just an update after hours of phone calls today.

Turns out my mum does indeed have a trust, however it's not with the company that she thought!

I phoned the land registry after failing to get in touch with the original viva planning to see if there were any pending applications for the property, as although the title deed said she was the owner online I knew it didn't show any pending applications. The lady was so helpful. Sure enough, there is a pending application going through and she named the company and provided a telephone number.

So I checked their website online before calling them and they seemed a lot more legitimate - I phoned and spoke to someone from the trusts department who confirmed that this viva planning was essentially a consultancy company and once they have done all the administrative bits they send over to them and they are responsible for all of the legal aspect of drawing up the trust and are also trustees. She was able to confirm my mum had indeed signed all of the paperwork needed and it had been witnessed by her neighbours. She is sending me a copy of all paperwork in the post including the trust document.

I've booked an appointment with an independent solicitor now to get the trust document looked at to see if it's legally compliant ( although I'm 90% sure if the time comes for care that's needed the council will look straight through it) but at least it didn't turn out to be that she had either signed her house over to some random person or that she's been conned out of £4000

These companies are the biggest con going They will have drawn your Mum in with a write your Will for £99.00 offer. From there they will have used high pressure sales techniques to 'upsell' your Mum a Trust fund.
Please don't be angry with your Mum, they do this on the basis of avoiding care home fees and they are total con artists.
We had the same thing happen to our family and it was an absolute nightmare.
After my Dad passed away the Trust fund meant our family property passed onto grandchildren as the Trust fund is set up to ensure the property stays in the family and cannot be sold.
Trust funds are meant for gentry and people who live on grand estates they are not meant for everyday folk.
The miss selling of Trust funds is a national disgrace. It cost us a fortune in legal fees to get the Trust fund revoked and we had to employ legal specialists to do so.
It is the biggest miss selling scandal since payment protection.
I wrote to my MP about it but basically preying on the elderly, to sell them financial products they don't understand, which don't meet their needs and which are basically a huge con is perfectly acceptable and there is nothing you can do about it.
OP get on to your solicitor first thing as it is going to take a long time and be very expensive to sort this out but make sure you do.
The stress we had on top of dealing with our grief was unbearable and it made me ill as at the time we were told there was nothing we could do to get the Trust fund revoked.
It is criminal what these companies get away with in terms of miss selling but please don't be angry with your Mum, they know exactly what they are doing and the sales techniques they use are deceptive and scandalous.
Good luck with getting this sorted OP and please keep us updated, watching with interest.

you would have had to sign as an attorney, but not in her presence.

I’m a Willwriters and am forever seeing clients who’ve been persuaded to do these lifetime trusts, on the basis that they mean there’s no IHT or care fees to pay.

for the vast majority of people, they are at best useless, and at worst will end up costing more in tax.

lots of unscrupulous companies set these up and charge an absolute fortune to do so.

trusts in wills are usually much more useful, obviously depending on circumstances.

You don’t pay cgt on a trust, as it’s the trust which owns the house, not the individual

Agree Mumblechum absolutely.

Reading Graham Kessler KC latest textbook on estate planning and he is the ultimate expert in the field. Carefully drafted trusts within wills can be useful. Lifetime trusts for the average client? No way.

When you’ve done all the paperwork I’d send it to Dan Neidle to investigate and analyse.

This is awful OP.

Re Land Registry I think it takes about 6 months for their records to be updated.

It is a scam if the client (mother) has no paperwork!

In your shoes, I would ring the Office of Public Guardianship immediately , and convey your concerns that someone has applied or might apply illegally for power of attorney over your mother. Confirm that you are the registered power-of-attorney (I think you said that that’s the case?, and if not I would apply immediately if your mother is happy with that). I would also register for alerts with land registry so that you are aware if any action is carried out against the property (searches, applications for change of registered ownership etc), which will give you time to try and protect it. There are two different kinds of alerts, and I can’t remember the difference, but register for both. There has been coverage on radio four recently about how scammers can take ownership of mortgage free properties from vulnerable people. The £4000 may or may not be retrievable, but I don’t think it’s your priority at the moment. Also contact FCA and report, and ask for advice. If you think this financial company has been given her banking information, I would ring the banks and alert to possible fraud and help her move her assets into fresh bank accounts. It’s not quite clear what this company is up to, but they are clearly at least a little bit shady, (not FCA registered), and I would not want to take any chances. There is probably more you could do, but I’m at the limits of my knowledge!

£1400 😱 its under £100 if you just complete the paperwork yourself plus you would have needed to sign it and it would need to be witnessed

And the trust pays the CGT.
Your point is what exactly?