Long
Term Residential Care
PLANNING FOR RESIDENTIAL HOME FEES
Have you ever thought that one day you might have to move in to a Residential Home or a Nursing Home?
Have you ever considered how you would pay the fees?
At present typical basic fees for a Residential Home are ,400 per week. You will receive no help with paying these fees until your capital has been reduced to, 16000 and you will only be entitled to have the fees paid in full when your capital sinks below ,10,000. Even then only a basic fee is paid; if you are in a Home that charges more you will either have to pay the rest yourself or move to a cheaper Home.
Every year many elderly people have to sell their homes and use the sale proceeds to pay for Residential Home fees. To many of these people the Home represents their life savings and to see these drain away is very upsetting.
We can help you to preserve your hard earned capital by means of a Trust which would enable you to give your house away whilst reserving the right to carry on living in it as if it were still yours. This means you can reduce your capital so as to enable you to claim assistance with the Residential Home fees much earlier but without giving up the right to live in your home.
You can sell the house an buy another and under certain types of Trust any money left over can be paid to you.
If you ever have to move in to a Residential Home your house can be let and you could receive the rents, or if the house is sold and the sale proceeds invested, you would be able to receive the interest or dividends.
When you give the house away it is transferred to Trustees who will then be the people who have authority to sell or let the house.
It goes without saying that you must be very careful when selecting your Trustees; it is most important that you appoint people whom you can be sure will carry out your wishes.
For this reason we recommend that one of the Trustees should be you, the person setting up the Trust, and that another Trustee should be a Solicitor. This will give you a strong element of control since you would be a Trustees yourself and, since the Solicitor has no financial interest in the Trust they can be relied on to carry out your wishes.
Any Trust should be set up early. It is dangerous to leave it until the last moment because an interval of time must pass between transferring your home to the Trustees and claiming assistance with Residential Home fees. Six months is the absolute minimum.