Hiding Assets

[kirstybeebee]

There was recently a post about whether you could sell your home to children to later avoid having to pay care home fees. Well putting the house aside, I wondered about protecting your assets. As far as I am aware, if you have a stash of cash, you somehow need to get it out of the banking system otherwise the authorities can quite easily find it. putting it into the stock market or buying premium bonds won't keep it hidden because they can find money that has been invested like that.

So to get cash out of the banking system and away from the authorities, it would hardly be recommended to take the cash out of the bank and Stuff it under a mattress, so what about buying something valuable like jewelry or antiques maybe then keep them in a safety deposit box? Is there any way the authorities could get hold of something like that and claim it back towards paying care costs?

[fiction-factory]

I think one factor in these cases is that future beneficiaries can see a parent's/relative's money as their entitlement/promised inheritance money that they are protecting and sadly in some case that takes precedence over the needs of the person whose money it is

[albaqwerty]

apologies for the digression, there was a thread on here some time back about family spending what they had accumulated through their life ( not a vast fortune) and family told them to go and spend it and enjoy their money.
in effect, 'mum and dad, you've worked hard and long, go and enjoy'
If only family members were as caring.....

[MTbowels]

It's tragic fiction-factory. We would have taken my mum into our home at the drop of the had it not been for the fact that the children were still at home and there was no bedroom available. My thinking on it was that my mum had brought me to the age that I was through sometimes very difficult and arduous years for herself and my dad. The least I could do was give her my support in this time of her need.

Virtually overnight following her admission my sense of her being safe and secure in 24 hour care was destroyed by these people who acted like parasites in trying to secure every last penny she had.

As I said earlier, I fully accept that someone has to pay and where the resident has the money in the bank to pay for their care, then they should pay. I wouldn't be too keen on part of my council tax going to fund a place for a stranger in my county when they had money in the bank. It is the Modus Operandi of the officious teams charged with recovering fees that I personally find abhorent.

[kirstybeebee]

As I have said, we started paying for the care my parents received even before they went into a care home as they had carers visiting their own home every day until this just became unmanageable.

Once they went into the home as residents we continued to pay, my brother handled all of the finance as he was given power of attourney. He knew we would have to pay as my parents owned their home and that they had savings. Whilst they were in the home my brother put the house up for sale and it was sold.

However I do remember my brother telling me that on more than one occasion he had been contacted by the authority enquiring about my parents assets. He very sternly informed them that we were already paying for their care in full so any assets my parents had were nothing to do with them, so I can quite understand the harassment that MTbowles has said he went through when the authority weren't receiving any payments whilst his parents were in care.