Looking for guidance/case law as to the order in which assets should be used towards the payment of care home fees for a Donor - namely whether the savings of the Donor should be used in preference to selling the Donor’s property to realise funds.
The situation is complicated by the fact that in her Will the Donor gifts her property to named individuals - but her residuary estate is only gifted to some of those individuals - not all of them.
So, if the property is sold whilst she is alive but before her savings have been fully utilised then some of the property gifted individuals would miss out financially in that the property gift/legacy would fail on her death.
Thank you.
I don’t think you’ll find any official guidance on this as everyone’s circumstances are different. The point about an LPA is that the donor has entrusted the attorney to make decisions in their best interests, taking into account their past and present wishes and feelings, beliefs and values. Hopefully the attorney will have some idea of these, even if the person is no longer able to express them.
There are a host of administrative considerations which the donor would have had to consider, and now the attorney must take into consideration. For example, the length of time it is likely to take to realise the finance from the property, the length of time the savings will last before the other assets will need to be used, etc.
Perhaps the best guidance is to consider what the donor would be doing if they retained capacity to make the decision for themselves.
Hya Stephen
As a general rule the local authorities will exhaust the saving that are above the threshold first
To keep it simple, has Steve points out. Liquid assets above £23, 250 will make the service user a self-funder for care. Next is the disregard of 12 weeks for residential or nursing care. Followed by the value of the property. If s/he owns assets e.g. car, they will be also a consideration depending on the local policy. Provided the service user is not on CHC or s.117 aftercare. Gifted property is a matter for the finance team to consider.