House Deeds

[confused73]

My FIL owns his house, no mortgage, he is old and quite poorly. In order to look after him correctly we have decided to move in to his home and extend it. We would then rent our house out. Our concern is that should my FIL become so poorly he needs a nursing home he will need to sell his property to pay for it. Would it be sensible to change the deeds on his house to mine & my partners names and our house in to my FIL so that should a sale be necessary it will be the smaller property that has to be sold. I don't fully understand the whole deeds thing.

[Barmaid]

You could do that, and then the tenanted property could be sold.

You should refer to the Department of Health's Charging for Residential Accommodation Guide (CRAG) - although note, this is about to be updated.

Para 7.007 states Where the LA considers it reasonable to do so, they can disregard the value of premises not covered in paragraphs 7.002-006 in which a third party continues to live. LAs will have to balance the use of this discretion with the need to ensure that residents with assets are not maintained at public expense. It may be reasonable, for example, to disregard a dwelling's value where it is the sole residence of someone who has given up their own home in order to care for the resident, or someone who is an elderly companion of the resident particularly if they have given up their own home. Schedule 4 para.18

[DaisyMae]

But beware, Local Authorities are aware of all the ways that people try to avoid paying nursing home fees and come down very hard on people who abuse the system. Also, in order for you to obtain the title to your father in law's house, he must either sell it to you or give it to you - in the latter case you would be subject to various taxes, including capital gains should he die before seven years is up. If he were to sell the house to you it may well be construed that he was trying to avoid future nursing home fees and the LA would take a dim view of that and can actually force the resale of the property to pay the fees. (I am not entirely sure of the actual legal facts here, but they are along those lines).