subject: Can care home fees be avoided? [print this page] Can care home fees be avoided? Can care home fees be avoided?
With anageingpopulation, coupled with the burden of one of the worst recessions in many decades, there are many families who are feeling the strain of having to pay care home fees to look after their loved ones. Torn between providing their relatives with the best possible care and the financial burden that paying for nursing homes can be, it is little doubt that many people are asking is there a way to avoid care home fees?
Worryingly, local authorities can demand that you sell your home to continue to pay for the care home fees, creating great distress and financial uncertainity for all those involved, both the families paying for the cost and of course the people actually in the care home who already battle with the burden they may be on the rest of their family as they become more frail and dependent. Fortunately there are a number of solutions to help you avoid selling your home to pay for care fees.
One such way to avoid the fees imposed by care homes is to speak to a specialist advisor, who can help you with protection planning. Even if the issues of nursing home costs may seem many years away, the added security that speaking to an advisor and forming a secure financial plan for yourself and your family will be felt by all. It is possible to set up a trust to avoid care home fees. Placing assets into trusts, such as your property, will mean that it no longer forms part of your estate, meaning that the local authorities can no longer demand that they property be sold to cover nursing home fees. The assets that are placed into Trust can no longer be included as part of means testing, a consequence of this is that you may no longer be eligible to pay for the high cost of a nursing home. Of course you have complete control over what happens to the assets that are placed into Trust - there are a number of bespoke solutions that can be tailored to look after your unique family situation.
