Cash gifts to Children and Grandchildren

by **sgreenia** on Wed Dec 28, 2011 11:02 am

Happy Xmas all.

I hope somebody can offer a bit of advice before I take the professional route.

My Grandfather (who's 86) has recently been told he'll need to have a support nurse in the (his) home and will eventually (probably within the next few years) have to move into a care home.

He has approx 40k of savings, 50k of investments and his house which is worth around £160k.

He's keen to give away as much money as possible as gifts to family and is also looking to sell his property and downsize. Having worked and saved all his life he's wary of everything being swallowed up further down the line in care costs.

Any suggestions anyone has would be much appreciated.

by **Lee Young** on Wed Dec 28, 2011 11:41 am

On the basis that it is already clear that he will need some sort of supported living, anything he does now is unlikley to work. The local authority can look back as far as it wants and if it determines that the primary reason for any gift was to enhance his rights to financial support from the local authority then it will deem him still to have the assets he gave away, and therefore he would be over the threshold for funding his own care. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just trying to sell you something that ultimately will not work!

by **Lee Young** on Wed Dec 28, 2011 11:42 am

Although one option would be to use his capital to buy an annuity to fund the care. Speak to a financial adviser on those options. But even this does not tick the "has assets but doesn't want to pay for care" box!

by **sgreenia** on Wed Dec 28, 2011 12:04 pm

Thanks for the feedback. He does understand that if able he has to contribute to his care himself.

However, he has a £1500/month pension which should cover a reasonable % of the care home costs.

Should it go down that route and he's in care, can he still give away money to family each tax year or does he have to retain all his assets for his future care and wait until his assets get below the twenty-odd grand threshold?

Thanks.

by **Lee Young** on Wed Dec 28, 2011 3:42 pm

Any gifts made will potentially be disregarded - delieberate deprivation of capital is what it is called!

by **cliffordpope** on Sun Jan 01, 2012 12:28 pm

We are in a slightly similar position with my mother.
One thing you could try is investigating further help to enable him to continue in his own home, or at least prolong as long as possible.
There is more free or fixed price help available from social services than you might realise. Also even paid help from private providers is still cheap compared with a long-term prospect of loss of capital.

If he has his own reasonable income, presumably Attendance Allowance, and someone in the family can qualify for Carers Allowance, plus anything you are prepared to contribute too, it might add up to enough income to purchase a useful amount of care in his home.

just a thought - obviously circumstances vary.