The potential cost of care in later life is one of the biggest worries our clients raise with our care home fee planning solicitors. Many people have worked hard to buy a home and build up savings, and the thought of those assets being consumed by care fees is difficult to accept. At BWS Law, we specialise in advising clients on what they can sensibly do to plan for the cost of care and protect their assets insofar as possible.
In England, anyone who needs residential care is financially assessed by their local authority. The assessment looks at income and capital, and if they fall above the applicable thresholds, you are expected to pay for your own care. Often, the value of your home is taken into account, although there are important exceptions, including where a spouse, partner, or certain other relatives still live there.
Not everyone has to pay for their care costs. Where a person’s primary need relates to their health, NHS Continuing Healthcare can cover the full cost of care, and local authorities also offer deferred payment agreements that allow fees to be secured against a property rather than forcing an immediate sale. Understanding how these rules apply to your circumstances is the essential first step in any planning.
The care home fee planning solicitors at BWS Law help individuals, couples, and their families prepare sensibly for the possibility of care. Some of the main areas our work covers include the following.
We review what you own and how, and consider what would happen if you or your spouse or partner needed care tomorrow. We explain which assets would be assessed, which would be disregarded, and where genuine care home fee planning opportunities exist.
For couples, one of the most effective and entirely legitimate means of care home planning is making a will containing a life interest trust over each person’s share of the home, usually combined with changing the way the property is jointly owned. If one of you later needs care, the deceased partner’s share is held on trust for the family rather than belonging outright to the survivor, while the survivor keeps the right to live in the home for life. Our care home fee planning solicitors routinely prepare the wills, the severance of the joint ownership, and the Land Registry entries needed to put this arrangement in place.
While tempting, giving away your home or savings to avoid care home fees is rarely effective. Local authorities can treat you as still owning assets you deliberately gave away to reduce your care bill, with no time limit on how far back they can look, and schemes marketed as making your home ‘care-fee proof’ frequently fail while creating serious risks of their own. We will tell you plainly whether a proposed gift or trust is likely to be effective, what the wider tax and practical consequences would be, and what safer and more efficient alternatives you might consider.
Effective later-life planning is about far more than money. Lasting powers of attorney let you choose who would manage your finances and make decisions about your care if you became unable to, and they are far quicker and cheaper to put in place now than a court application would be later. Our lasting power of attorney solicitors can prepare these alongside your wider planning.
When care is actually needed, we help families understand and respond to the local authority’s financial assessment, consider eligibility for NHS Continuing Healthcare, and deal with deferred payment agreements, so that nobody pays more than the rules require.
Care fee planning is an area where bad advice is common and can be costly. Here is what sets the team at BWS Law apart.
We have no products to sell and no interest in recommending schemes that will not withstand scrutiny. We will give a frank assessment of your options, and advise you on the best way forward in your circumstances.
Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and the property work that goes with them are all handled within the firm, alongside our conveyancing and probate teams. Your future planning aligns because the people delivering it work together.
Conversations about later life touch on health, family, and mortality, and they should never feel rushed. We explain everything in plain language, welcome family members to appointments where you want them there, and give you the time you need to make any decisions.
Call us on 01509 270288 or make an online enquiry to book a consultation with our care home fee planning solicitors.
