It can be a shock to many people when they find out they may have to pay over £100,000 to cover their care home costs.
If you or your relative has Capital above the maximum threshold of £23,250 they may want to seriously consider effective legal ways to mitigate their liability to pay for their care costs in the future.
In effect to get help with legally avoiding care and nursing home fees in the future.
There are a number of ways you can effectively dispose of Capital without breaching the Local Authority Guidelines, including:
- Setting up a Trust
- Repaying legitimate debts
- Producing receipts for legitimate expenditure
- Purchasing an Investment Bond with Life Cover (depending on the circumstances and timing of the investment)
It is only natural that people are looking at protecting their assets from nursing home fees and looking at how to avoid selling their homes when going into care.
One of the most regular questions we get asked is how to avoid selling your house to pay for care...
Of course, you cannot deliberately look to avoid care fees by gifting your property or putting a house in trust to avoid care home fees.
If you do this your local authority will come after you, and possibly the person that was given the gift, to reclaim what was owed.
However, you can mitigate against this...
1. By purposely giving away your property, such as the family home, there is a risk that it is seen as depriving yourself of assets. If you do this, your property may still be assessed when your assets are calculated.
2. There are legitimate reasons as to why you can gift your assets without them potentially being used as part of the calculation to see if you have to pay for your care fees.
3. It is possible to put your house in to a Trust and assign your property to someone else. However, there have to be other reasons as to why you put your property in to a trust and not just because you don’t want to pay your care fees.
4. Other methods to consider include domiciliary care and having care at home.
5. The most popular way to avoid selling your house to pay for your care is to use equity release. If you own your own house, you can look at Equity Release. This allows you to take money out of your house and use that to fund your care.
The key to avoiding residential care home fees and home care fees is to get professional help as early as possible.
Get in contact with us today on 01843 598620 to discuss your Care Home Fee options.
We hope you found this article helpful!
Newlife Wills team.