Dementia-Alzheimers

What an awful situation. Perhaps the affected partner might be entitled to state aid if divorced, and there fore ‘on their own’. I’m afraid I can’t really help.

Although it seems heartless I can see where it coming from. It seems as though so long as there's a partner the state doesn't make any effort to help.

A relative of my husband's did this. This was about 20 -25 years ago and here in the US. They were farmers. She had Alzheimers for a several years and needed to be put in a nursing home, so he divorced her.

The divorce was approved by their adult children and everyone remained friends. Nobody blamed him. He kept his farm and visited his wife often in the nursing home.

Here you have to spend down to a certain amount before Medicare pays for the nursing home care. I think he would have had to start selling some land, I'm not sure. I just know he didn't pay a dime for care and he loved his wife.

it is a very complicated area.
the authorities are able to go back as far as they like looking into a person's finances and circumstances, to detect what they call alienation of assets.
i don't know how/if it would apply re divorce.
it usually relates to adult children trying to squirrel away money.

Yes the Louis Theroux prog was from the States and yes I understand authorities here check if you are trying to «relocate» assets. Isn’t it just awful? Boris promised to sort this out but, of course, nothing’s been done. I do feel your assets should be for your own use though and not just saving it yo pass on

My DH has Alzheimer’s and from advice from a solicitor monies in savings and also your house is ‘fair game ‘ to be taken for care fees . Wish we’d had a crystal ball , we saved and bought a house hoping to perhaps downsize and spend money on travel , and have some to leave children and grandchildren. If we’d known what was coming down the tracks would have spent the lot before diagnosis.

When we made our wills, we decided to change our house-owning status from joint tenants to tenants-in-common. We each own 50% of our house and each have stated that if one of us dies, their 50% will go to our two daughters equally, with the stipulation that they would allow the remaining parent to live in the house for the rest of their life. It was all explained to us at the time prevents the whole house value being used up for any long-term care fees. I'm sure somebody on here can explain it better than me but the above is the basic explanation.

Trisha that is really well explained and a really good idea. That way only one have of the house can be used for care costs.

Also, savings should be split between you. If you have, say £100k savings in joint names (ie £50k each) and one person has to pay £20k in care fees (even at home) then the joint total is reduced to £80k and so on.

If the savings had been split, then the other person maintains their savings and state help would be claimable sooner.

I help run courses for the carers of people living with dementia and people really sit up and take notice of this bit.

Why aren't people in Scotland made to sell their homes to pay for care? Surely the cost of care comes from the same pot as the rest of the country, and we all pay our taxes.

We were advised to do the same Trisha so we each only own half the house; the rest to the children and they can’t boot us out either!

Trisha, the way I understand it, you then have to pay a commercial value rent for 50% to your children, no?

Kali No, the stipulation in the will makes it clear that the remaining spouse will live in the house as they did before their partner died. Any upkeep and expenses will, of course, be paid as normal by the remaining spouse but no rent is payable to our daughters. Kittylester, thankfully we both have our own savings and current accounts in our own names. The only joint account we have is for bills/food/house upkeep which we both pay into monthly. This may seem strange to some Gransnetters, but it's what we've always done. I like to have some financial independence should anything untoward happen, and my DH has no problem with that.

I think Kali is correct in saying that some rent should be paid by the surviving spouse to whomever actually owns the other half. Worth checking. Age uk have very good, downloadable advice sheets.