Help wanted with legal issues with mums house and care home fees

[chillijava]

HI
i am hoping someone can help me with some legal issues i have with my elderly mum who has altzheimers.
my husband and i have decided because my mum has this condition for her to sell her property and move in with us so that she can stay with us as long as possible before she may have to go into care.
because we want her to have a section of a new house to herself we need to buy a bigger house so we will be selling her house and ours, hers to fund the move and ours to make the necessary alterations.
what worries me is that if she ever becomes too ill for me to care for her and has to move into a home what will happen to the house as it will be our home to and if we are made to sell it to fund her care we will be homeless.
would it be better for my mum to pay for the new property but only have myself and my husband as the owners of the property and my mum to be a tennant or how do we do this
thank you
andrea

[wazzer]

Hi
I think you may have to obtain legal advice on your question as I think the Local Authority may view what you are proposing as a 'Depravation of Assets' when your mother will need Residential Care, but I am sure someone with more dealings in this field will reply shortly.

Kind regards
Ken.

[chillijava]

hi
thanks for getting back to me, i hope someone will have some ideas on this
andrea

[BeckyJan]

No one is allowed to give you professional advice here so I really do advise you to see a solicitor about this.

My own thought is whether three of you purchase a property and share all costs of alterations. In doing that make sure all three of you are 'tenants in common'. Whilst raising this I feel it is especially important to clear this legally to find out what would happen to you once your Mother goes into care. You need to find out whether the funding would come from a third of the property or whether there would be a disregard. I have serious doubts about the latter as your Mother has already been diagnosed.

So please get professional advice and make sure any agreements are clearly written.

[hollycat]

I echo Beckyjans comments above.

OH and I sold up and moved into mums house, mainly to avoid disruption/confusion to mum. Now for the "twist" in our case; we actually purchased mums house for her 20 years ago and she has since lived there rent free. The house is in mums name.

We have taken legal advise asking what would happen if mum moved into a care home, so would strongly urge you do the same. In our case, as mum has been diagnosed with alzheimers, the solicitors suggested to make no changes.

Just another option for consideration; could you fund the new property yourselves and have mum as your tenant ? i.e. take rent from her ?

Best of luck