Will you have to sell off your home to pay for care?

Mar 21 2008 By Anne Forrest (web user)

NEARLY 45,000 (one in five) people in South Lanarkshire will have to sell their assets, including the family home, to fund care in later life.

And six in ten adults over the age of 50 have no idea how much care costs.

The Scottish Government contribute but that still leaves a sizeable sum every week to pay for private nursing care.

And more people are considering it as local authority spending is cut.

Anne Forrest, a South Lanarkshire-based consultant for Legal Services UK Ltd, who write 7500 wills and 1500 Power of Attorney packages a year, said: "Sadly, figures indicate that a third of adults in this country over the age of 50 have to make a difficult decision and put somebody into care.

"It's not an easy decision to make but it is one that sometimes must be taken for the good of the individual.

"Our research nationwide indicates that up to 70,000 people annually have to sell their homes to pay for care costs.

T"hey can be over £600 a week and the Scottish Government only pays a slice of that. A simple multiplication shows that the bill for care at £600 a week will be £31,200 a year and you cant meet that without selling the home.

"It's traumatic, it's sad and it's depressing, but that's the reality."

She added: "Long-term care has to be paid in full if the person has assets above £21,000. This is normally funded from savings and investments until they are exhausted.

"Then, local authorities will target the home to fund the rest of the care. If the home has been transferred to the family, the council will consider this to be a deprivation of assets to avoid care costs and will expect the family to pay for the care.

"Local authorities are going back as far as 15 years to find out where assets have been deprived.

"There is no option as local authorities are being squeezed to control costs and that forces more people to fund the care themselves.

"That's a major worry for thousands of people and there are ways around the problem.

"Problems can be avoided if married couples or middle-aged people prepare wills with specialist property clauses."