Protect home from care fees using a Will

In Adel Jibs Private Client department, we are seeing more and more clients who are seeking to protect their assets from care home fees. Their major concern is to ensure that they leave their assets and valued possessions for their family members after they have passed away. Protect home from care fees using a Will by considering our service today.

We have good news for you at Adel Jibs, there are steps you can take to protect some of your assets from care home fees.  We will give careful consideration to your matter, and we would always suggest taking advice from a legally qualified professional, such as our team at Adel Jibs to ensure you are advised properly on the options available to you and that you will is drafted in the correct manner.

A commonly drafted ‘simple’ Will leaves everything to your spouse or civil partner on the first death and then everything to children, on the second death.

The current position is that if you have assets over the threshold sum of £23,250, you would need to pay for the cost of your care. What this means essentially is that you may be required to potentially fund the cost.

Today, most people’s main assets are their house, going into care may lead to losing the property to fund it. If you are concerned about this, there are ways of structuring your Will using a trust to protect your property, which has no impact on you during your lifetime.
Instead of leaving all your assets outright to the surviving spouse or civil partner on death, you can each place one-half share into a trust for their benefit.
Within the Will, the survivor is given the right to freely enjoy the use of half of the estate held on trust during their lifetime which does not legally pass to them. if you the survivor needs to go into the care in the future, then they do not own the full value of the property, only half.

We have come to realise at Adel Jibs, this is a very popular way to safeguarding yourself from care home fees, as it leaves the surviving spouse or civil partner with the peace of mind to enjoy the full use of the property during their lifetime.

Part of this type of Will planning also involves changing the way in which you own your property.  There are two ways of owning a property, either as joint tenant or tenants in common.

Generally speaking, couples own their property as joint tenants.  Please make contact with our friendly and specialist team at Adel Jibs Solicitors by completing our online application form.