House Sale Proceeds to Nursing Home

[HelenB]

I read with interest Tony Heare's mail regarding his 'inheritance' being lost to his mother's nursing home.

There seem to be a lot of us in this position! My mother's house was sold 8 years ago and the proceeds are slowly dwindling away with her fees of £400 a week! It's awful to sit and watch all my parents hard earned savings disappearing for care that should really be paid by the NHS.

Now that her funds are nearing the threshold of £20,000, I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has gone on to claim future care payments from Social Services. How detailed will my accounting records need to be regarding my expenditure (on my mother's behalf as her Power of Attorney) over the past 8 years?

 

[Sheila]

Dear Helen, sorry to be mercenary, but on your mother's behalf, do a funeral plan before you hit the limit. If you dont, it will come out of the £20,00 they allow her to keep!! this is what your mum would have wanted, she can't help what they have already wrenched from her! Its disgusting, it's despicable, but it's the law!! I don't know how detailed you have been, (I kept every damn receipt) but as long as what you have spent was justified for your mother's well being, I (personally) can't see how you can have done ANYTHING wrong. It's not fair, but there it is. All we can do is the best we can in the circumstances. Dementia in any form devastates the sufferer and the family. It is an illness the same as any other. Unfortunately, until the powers that be are personally affected, they will not understand, and we will continue to be ignored! (Sorry, a little agro crept in there!!) You will have to keep paying, that is the law. Once the threshhold is reached, the network (SS) steps in. That is why I said do the prepaid funeral. If you don't it will come out of what your Mum can legally hold on to. It's not her fault, it's not yours, it is the law as it stands and in my opinion it stinks and is is Bxxxxy unjust. Thinking of you, love, She. XX

 

[Jude]

Dear Helen and Sheila,

This 'money thing' is one that instantly raises my hackles! Here I go again....

We, as carers, do exactly that. We care! Not only do we look after our loved ones physically and mentally, we try our best to protect their financial interests and apportion their money wisely and worry like hell about running out of the stuff. What happens then, I dread to think...... It's a huge burden of responsibility.

This is NOT made any easier by the Court of Protection and others, who seem to think that we are all a bunch of potential fraudsters, hell bent on fleecing our relatives at every possible opportunity. I realise that there have been isolated cases where this has happened, but ......

Many of us have been carers for years. Surely if we had any smart ideas about shooting through with the dosh, then we would hardly be hanging around now? We'd all be lounging around in a tax-free haven somewhere, not slogging it out on a daily basis in soggy old England!

I really resent the implications. I don't like being treated like a kid in a sweet shop and I will spend every last pound of my parents' hard earned savings for THEM - if only to stop the Inland Revenue getting their greedy hands on it later.

Jude

 

[Norman]

Jude
I'll second that
Norman

 

[storm]

Hi all, I have been reaing this post and i am now wondering were we would stand.Mum made her will in 1985 leaving her house and everything else to us, when she sold her house and came to live us she asked the solicitor if she could make the proceeds of the house sale over to us there and then he said fine so we duly did that. What would happen now regarding care packages and respite if we needed them would we have to fund them? thehouse sale didnt make a great deal it was a bit run down. This as started my worry head off.

 

[Jude]

Dear Storm,

Don't worry - just check with your Solicitor. There is a scheme whereby anything that is 'gifted' to you becomes tax free provided the donor lives for 7 years after the gift. If this is correct, then you should have no worries.

Jude

 

[Sheila]

Storm, Judes right, they could only assess her on what she has left now if more than 7 years. You fill in the forms, so you just put down what she has now. Also, just for the record, when I filled in Mum's probate form, page two of the Inland revenue bit, questions 2,3, & 4 ask did the person who has died within 7 years of the date they died, make any gifts. I t goes on in different ways about this and it asks about trusts premiums etc. but it all seems to be geared to the 7 years so anything gifted before that is OK. If it was less than seven years, apparently a sliding scale comes into play. The first 2 years you pay the full amount of tax, 40 per cent (I think) then its a sliding scale. Love, She. XX

 

[Tony Heare]

Hi everyone, great to read all these threads and listen to some common sense for a change!
Since my last post, my dad's/mother's house has sold and now comes the irritating part where the proceeds go to the court who initially gave me the Court of Protection and the local authority puts a charge against it for my mother's care home fees.
As I've said before and like so many others of you, I detest a law that can allow this sort of thing to happen. I'm not sat here willing my mother to die so that I can get my hands on the money, but a part of me sometimes thinks along those lines so that the powers that be can't get their dirty little mitts on it. Believe me, if my mother passed away tomorrow, this is one person who wouldn't go on a spending spree just for the sake of it, but I can't see how I can spend the money wisely on her when she's cooped up in a nursing home 24/7!!!

The system annoys everyone concerned because we all feel so helpless - it needs a governing body, a 'trade union' or an uprising even to make these people see sense. Ban hunting? Yeah, that touches a nerve with society, but until someone actually deals with a relative with dementia they have no idea of what we're all suffering. Makes you sick.

 

[Iainwh]

Avoiding this commie ****?

how do you avoid this legal daylight robbery?

will they put the house on the market even if my father and I are compus mentus?

can we sign things that are in my mothers name over to my dad and me Ie close joint bank accounts etc?

cause with me looking after my mum Iam not able to work so when mum comes the end after weve paid all the bills my prospects are looking pretty grim.

theres got to be a way of avoiding this.

 

[Kriss]

I am sorry if I sound like an advert for Independant Financial Advisors but this is something that calls for professional advice. In my experience an IFA is 1) cheaper than a solicitor - at very least the first consultation usually free of charge 2) speaks simple English 3) is probably used to dealing with these types of situations on a regular basis and 4) would probably be suggested by a decent solicitor anyway as they specialise and have to be totally up to date with current financial legislation.

Everyones case is different, no rule applies to all. Use word of mouth recommendations if possible and I would avoid the so called "independents" attached to your bank or building society - however even one of these would be better than none.

Kriss

 

[HelenB]

Thanks to Sheila, Jude and everyone else who responded to my initial posting. It's certainly been useful to get some 'inside' information - just frustrating to hear that we're all coming up against the same obstacles!!

 

[jools]

Hi everyone,

there was a case up here in Scotland that went all the way to the House of Lords re. care home fees. Basically what happened was that this man gave up his job (and if I remember rightly also sold his own flat) and moved into his mother's house to look after her. The mother gifted the house to him; three or four years after that her dementia had got to the stage where the son could no longer cope and he had to put her in a nursing home. The council demanded that the flat be sold to pay the fees; the son saw this as unjust and took it to court. He was ruled against up here, but when it went to the Lords, they ruled in his favour.
The law is slightly fuzzy in Scots law; the council have a duty of care, but only in as so far that they can afford it. The argument therefore revolved round whether Dundee council could afford the care or not, and also as to whether the home had been gifted to avoid paying fees. If you the carer actually live in the house with the patient, then you are more likely to hold onto it.
I really feel that people like us need to get together as a matter of urgency and challenge the government on the funding of nursing homes. At the moment, it is devolved to local government; they get a lump sum to cover various services including nursing homes, and its not enough. The local authorities can't afford to fund them properly from what they get and the result is that three nursing homes per week(yes, per week!) are shutting. The rug is being pulled from under our feet on this one and we need to act. Also, I have noticed a lot of media articles on the tv and in the papers running down nursing homes and I feel this is a 'give a dog a bad name and hang it ' campaign. This was done with the mental institutions, they were shut, ' Care in the Community' was brought in, but not properly funded, and a lot of these people ended up that they could not cope. A lot of them ended up in jail for petty crimes, and the prison officers found themselves dealing with a situation they had not trained for. When the government comissioned a review of the mentally impaired in society, the one area that they did not send their people into, was the jails; they were left out of the report. Phew!Sorry guys; bit of a rant, must be cos I haven't been on the forum for a couple of weeks. Seriously though, we do need to act on this before it's too late.

Jools

 

[Jude]

Dear Jools,

Thanks for the information. It's always really great when somebody has a 'win'.

Have a look at the 'Respite' thread - we are trying to nut out a national 'Hit the Media' campaign. Perhaps you have some bright ideas and would like to contribute?

Best wishes,

Jude