How Best To Avoid Losing Your Property to care home fees

Care Home Fees – Tips On How Best To Avoid Losing Your Property
When a member of the family takes ill at an elderly age, it is usually difficult to recover from, and many people find themselves with a diminishing health and capacity to perform all of the everyday tasks that we take for granted. These can include things like feeding oneself, staying clean and tidy, and looking after the home you live in. In that instance, it is not uncommon for someone to be placed into a care home, where they can be attended to on a near-constant basis by professional caregivers. However, these payments for this care can be extremely expensive, and the family home can often be sold to pay for the duration of your stay.  

Although it is considered deliberate deprivation if you put your property into a Trust to avoid care home fees, it is not illegal to place your property into Trust for other reasons. Properties in a Trust are protected against third party claims such as care home fees. Download our Home Protection Trust brochure here.

Alternatively, we’ve put together a few tips to try and avoid such an eventuality.

Set up a fund for the eventuality of going into a care home
Sometimes, a little prior planning can go a long way into ensuring that your property is protected. Once you reach a certain age, it is worth considering setting up a bank account that is reserved solely for putting in money to pay for your care if you become unable to. Small monthly payments will soon begin to add up, especially if the process is over decades, starting from around middle age. This will hopefully be able to afford you a reasonable amount of time in a care home, without the need to sell your property to pay the care home fees.

Talk to your family and work out a plan
It may be worth sitting down with your family to discuss the financial side of entering into a care home, and the implications doing so may entail. A possible way to ensure that the property is not sold is to have members of the family agree to pay a certain amount into a fund for care home fees, with the promise that they will get back when you’ve passed, and the property is sold. This would work out particularly well if you were going to have your property sold once you’ve passed anyway, because then the house is not sold to pay the care home fees and the money will instead go back to your family members, which is a better use than paying for a care home, and could provide them with the chance to do something memorable for their kids, or improve their home, or take a holiday. In any circumstance, it would be a beautiful memory to leave them with, and something that is possibly better than selling the property outright for care home fees.

Look for a cheaper care home
This may go without saying, but looking for a care home that doesn’t charge ridiculously expensive fees but still offers you the care you need would obviously be the smartest choice. While also using the other two tips, it’s best to search around for a care home in the area that can attend to your needs, but if possible, find a care home that also is relatively inexpensive.

Overall, there are ways to reduce the risk to your house during paying for your care home fees. Most of the best ways involve planning ahead and cooperation with your family. If you sit down and explain the situation to them, most would be happy to help and you’ll come to a solution, but planning ahead is always a good idea and will be wise in the long term, as you can hopefully avoid the sale of your property and will instead have something to leave to your children.