Care home costs, part two:
Ways to Lessen the Burden of Residential Fees
THIS is the second part to last month’s Am Pàipear article by Kirsty Haxby which aimed to raise awareness with regards to paying for residential care and the threat this poses to your home.
If you are a home owner and live alone, be it through choice or because your spouse has passed away, and were required to enter into residential care, then your Local Authority (LA) has the right to charge you, which may be as much as £600- £900 per week. In order to pay this sum of money they have the right to use your home as a capital sum and may require you to sell it to pay for your care fees.
LAs take a zero tolerance approach to those who try to escape paying these fees either by passing title of their home or giving it away to another family member at any time in their life. Thus it is crucial that everyone knows this reality and that each of us should be prepared for it if we wish to keep our homes for future generations to inherit.
It has been thought that in the UK up to 200 homes per week are sold from under elderly people who can no longer pay for their care. This is the harsh reality of our aging population and the fact that by 2030 the cost of paying of care is likely to amount to £30 billion per year.
Therefore paying for care seems to be inevitable. However similar to the inevitability of death and taxes, there are precautions we can take to lessen such burdens.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }