Advice re funding care

[Distressed55]

Hello

I hold joint power of attorney with my siblings for my dad. He has vascular dementia, and will need to go into a nursing home. Currently he is in hospital, and has a social worker assigned to him. He has assets over £23,250, made up of some cash savings and a nice house.
The problem is that my siblings don't want to sell the house to pay for his care. They want to rent it out, and make up the shortfall between the income from that, and dads pensions. The problem with that is that neither of my siblings actually earn very much, and I am worried that the burden will fall on me if I agree to their plan.
I want to sell the house. The sale will cover all of his care costs for the rest of his life.
I am convinced that the reason they don't want to sell is more because they are protecting their inheritance than having dads best interests at heart.
As social services are involved, do they have to sign off on any funding plan, and can they refuse to endorse my siblings plan and compel them to sell dads house?
I'm incredibly distressed by all of this and don't know who to turn to.

 

[karaokePete]

Hello @Distressed55, you are welcome here and I hope you find the forum friendly, informative and supportive.
I haven't faced this issue but I know it has been discussed before and I'm sure you will get replies. I do know that rental not meeting income expectations and producing landlord responsibilities are some of the issue that have been pointed out in previous discussions.

 

[marionq]

Don’t agree to anything that will leave you paying. That would be more stressful than what you are going through now. Tell them you won’t agree to rental as it won’t cover the cost and would involve a lot of other costs. Sell and pay up and if there is anything left they’ll get their share.

Be firm.

 

[istherelight?]

Hi @Distressed55 .
My Mum went into a Care Home early last year and we decided to rent out her house for a year, hoping it would increase in value and give her more funds. It hasn't and as her savings are running out it is up for sale. The rental figures never really added up but we felt terrible about "selling it from under her". A daft, emotional response that has actually created a lot of work for us. And it still has to be sold anyway.

Because she was self- funding I had to source and sign up to a Care Home myself and ALL required me to sign to say that I,too,would be responsible for her payments. Before signing anything, I contacted Social Services to ask what would happen if her money ran out (if we had a delay with the house sale) and they agreed that they would fund her UNTIL the house was sold, whereupon we would repay the amount borrowed.

There are other options and your social worker can help you with this. Tell them how distressed you are and enlist their aid. You are not alone.

 

[Kevinl]

Hi and welcome to TP
As has been said for me the numbers just don't add up. One months rental of the house would cover about 10 days care for my wife, so if I drop dead tomorrow and the kids let the house out the numbers are something like:
Rental income covers 10 days care, however, as it would be my wife's income it would be liable to income tax when combined with her pensions so knock off 20% and a further 10% for an estate agent to manage it. My kids live miles away and couldn't check on the place let alone keep track of the legal statue of a tenant as a landlord is legally required to do. The cost of landlord's insurance, boiler checks and annual maintenance as well as electrical tests, joining a landlord's deposit scheme (again a legal requirement) and a hundred other things that you need to do.
You can enter a deferred payment agreement (DPA) with the local authority where they pay the fees to the care home and recover the money when the house is sold and they might agree to you letting it if the tenancy agreement passed their approval, but that all cost money.
Getting a house up to the standards and legalities to rent out would cost money too, could be a little, could be a lot, depends on what needs doing.
If you sign an agreement to guarantee the costs then that's what you have to do so I wouldn't be signing anything that made me personally liable so let them sign, the LA will have to do a financial assessment of them to ensure they can pay and if they fail then they could push for the house to be sold.
Just sell the place and have done is my advise in a nutshell, save all the grief, it's his house not their inheritance until the day he dies and his money should go on his care not their greed.
K

 

[Distressed55]

Thank you all for your kind words and advice. I have written to dads social worker so hopefully the financial assessment on my siblings will show that they can't fund sufficiently.

My view is and always has been that it's his house, paid for with his money and he needs it now. Their wants don't come into it - poor dad didn't want to get dementia.

Thank you again.

 

[jenniferpa]

I'm wondering if perhaps a deferred payment agreement might meet everyones needs/"wants"?

With a deferred payment agreement your siblings could get what they want (to rent out the house), you could get what you need - no responsibility for any shortfall and your father can get what he needs - his care bills met.

 

[Distressed55]

I did try that. They are adamant that they want to keep the house in its entirety, rather than go down the EPA route, which mean that they still end up having to sell the house to repay after dad dies, I suspect that they think dad isn't going to last for very long.

 

[Grannie G]

My view is and always has been that it's his house, paid for with his money and he needs it now. Their wants don't come into it - poor dad didn't want to get dementia.

This was my view too.

My sister had no contact with my mother throughout her illness but wanted me to rent her house. I wasn`t prepared to take any more responsibility and the house was sold.

It paid for my mother`s care.

 

[Delphie]

My advice would be to sit down together and have a realistic look at the numbers.

I rent out several of my mum's properties and the income they produce is excellent, but that's down to the plural. None of them, individually, would cover care costs.

So don't let emotions get in the way of the conversation you should be having. Get a letting agent in to tell you the rental income the property is likely to produce, then subtract all the costs you're going to have (Kevin has done a good rundown for you), then subtract at least one month's worth of rent from the annual income for anything unexpected. It's also worth remembering that some tenants do stop paying and it takes several months to get them to leave, so good rent protection insurance is an idea in your circumstances. Read the small print, though!

Once you have a realistic monthly baseline figure, split the shortfall between you all and talk about affordability, making it clear that you, for example, can't afford more than £ ***. It's about making it understood that while it would be great not to have to sell, if the numbers don't stack up you're just creating an even bigger problem and might have to sell quickly (and for less) in the very near future.

The bottom line is that letting properties can work and many landlords do very well out of it, but if you need a particular monthly figure your property will either produce it or it won't, so let the maths do the talking.

 

[lemonjuice]

If you sign an agreement to guarantee the costs then that's what you have to do so I wouldn't be signing anything that made me personally liable so let them sign,

This is to me a sound warning. You do not want to be personally liable and despite this comment

I suspect that they think dad isn't going to last for very long.

there is no guarantee of that. I checked 'average expectations of survival' after moving to a NH, when my mother went in and found the average expectation was 18 months.
However in the event, because of the good care in the Home, my mother lasted just shy of 6 years! During that period the NH fees increased by much more than inflation, one year by 27% and by the end I worked out the increase from entry to exit was near over a 60% increase. There's no way my husband and I could have afforded to pay any shortfall and certainly not with such increases.

 

[Distressed55]

Thank you all, once again.

I will try to be firm about not signing any agreement. The problem will come that if my siblings don't pay any top up (if social services agree that their plan is adequate) that I will end up paying just because I couldn't bear to see dad moved from the NH or upset in anyway. And my siblings know that, too.

Dad is in pretty good physical shape, given his age (90+). So I hope that he will have some years ahead of him, as happy as they can be, given his mental state.

But all the stress from my siblings isn't exactly helping trying to deal with losing a parent in these circumstances.

 

[Toony Oony]

Hi - this all must be so stressful for you. Although I have to make all the decisions being an only one, at least I am spared from having to come to agreements with other siblings!

Not a particularly helpful addition to the thread, but bear in mind that although the equity in a property may rise over time, the wear and tear caused by tenants can equally reduce the value and ultimate saleability. I know this from personal experience.

I have Mum's place up for sale at the moment. It is eminently rentable, but I do not want to have to refurbish at the end of a tenancy in order to facilitate a sale.

 

[lemonjuice]

The problem will come that if my siblings don't pay any top up (if social services agree that their plan is adequate) that I will end up paying just because I couldn't bear to see dad moved from the NH or upset in anyway. And my siblings know that, too.

Actually I doubt, unless you and your OH are on fabulous wages with a lot of savings you'd be able to afford the top up alone.
Seems most LA pay around the £500 per wk (ours is actually less than that ) and assuming that your father had State Pension plus a private pension say £200-250 per week that would go straight to SS to counter-balance their contribution with a small allowance of I believe around £23 per wk.

So depending on fees in your area you might have to find a shortfall contribution of between £300 and £700 .
My mother actually had her State Pension, a Civil Service Pension and half my father's Civil Service pension ,aa he'd paid in extra for his widow to receive something after his death. So all in all a good pension. As it happens we did let out her house so an extra £150 per week, £130ish Nursing care allowance and AA and still we had a £30 000+ shortfall - apprx £576 per week last year. If she hadn't been self-funding, there is no way my husband could have afforded to subsidize her care by that amount - it would have been half my own weekly wage and we had or own bills of course.

 

[Kikki21]

This is an interesting thread as I am planning to slightly refurb my mum’s bungalow in order to rent it out but as an air BnB property or on another booking site or both.
I have experience with this as I have refurbed my fiancé’s flats & the rate of return is actually excellent. Yes the intital cost is one thing but once that occurs then they have been rented out consistently.
We have also moved closer to both my mum’s house & my mum’s care home so maintaining the house is not a problem or won’t be.
It would be a definite help rather than selling the property outright.