HOW LOW CAN THEY GO?

Now councils are demanding the elderly pay care home fees by clawing back cash innocently gifted to family YEARS earlier

COUNCILS are wrongly clawing back cash from care home residents who give money to their children and grandchildren for weddings, buying homes and even fighting cancer.

Money Mail can reveal that cashstrapped councils are pursuing elderly people by claiming the money should have been used to pay care bills instead.

Some pensioners are being investigated even if they gave away their money years before they went into a home.

A watchdog found councils are accusing people of deliberately gifting cash to dodge care home fees — even if there is no evidence this was their motivation.

When someone goes into a residential home, the local authority carries out an assessment to decide how much they should pay towards their care.

The rules state that if the person has less than £23,250 in savings, property and other assets, they are entitled to financial support from the council.

But if officials believe someone gave away their wealth to bring their assets below this amount to avoid paying all, or part, of their fees — and protect their children’s inheritance — it is called ‘deprivation of assets’.

The council can then reclaim care fees it believes the person should have paid — even if they no longer have the money. The cash can be recovered from the recipient of the gift. Officers must consider whether avoiding care fees was a ‘significant motivation’. They must also take into account whether someone could easily foresee they would need that money for future care. The Local Government Ombudsman found some councils have demanded cash from families by making groundless assumptions about their motives. It accused several of having ‘no logical explanation’ or ‘ providing no evidence’ that families had deliberately tried to evade fees. Chris Keenan, who sits on the Board of Solicitors for the Elderly, a national association of lawyers for older people, said he had noticed a change in council attitudes. ‘They are looking into things in much more detail now than they used to,’ he says. ‘ Councils face budget cuts and have a duty to ensure the public aren’t paying for people who can afford to pay.’ In one case seen by Money Mail, Cornwall Council claimed a 91-yearold man had deprived himself of assets by handing £9,000 in cash gifts to his family. He gave £ 3,000 to his grandson who was getting married and buying a house, and £ 2,000 to his son- in- law in Australia for cancer treatment. When his son-in-law died, he paid £4,000 for his daughter to come home for a visit, and for his other daughter to travel out later to see her grieving sister.

One month later, in August 2014, he suffered a fall and then moved into a care home.

The council decided the gifts had been made with the intention of reducing his assets.

But in a report, the Ombudsman said: ‘The council has not provided a logical explanation or basis for its decision. He was managing with support . . . before he made the gifts to his family.

‘There was no reason for him to suppose he would need to move to permanent residential care.’

Cornwall Council said it had accepted the Ombudsman’s findings and had ‘reassessed’ its decision.

In another case, an elderly woman placed her share of her family home into a trust for her husband and son to inherit.

She moved into a residential home three years later when her husband died. Lancashire County Council carried out a financial assessment and found there had been a deliberate deprivation of assets.

But her son insists they never expected his mother would go into a care home and he had even renovated his home after his father’s death in anticipation she would live with him.

The watchdog found the council failed to ‘give full reasons for deciding there had been a deliberate deprivation of assets’. Lancashire County Council agreed to ‘disregard the property from the financial assessment’.

In a third case, a man in his late 70s with mobility and lung problems gave his son £25,000 to buy land to build a house.

Four months later, in February 2014, he suffered a fall and began to receive care in his home.

Gloucestershire County Council tried to recover the cash, saying the gift ‘may or may not have been done with the express intention of avoiding paying for care’. But the Ombudsman ruled ‘may or may not’ was not enough evidence.

The council reassessed and again concluded it was a deliberate deprivation of assets, it said.

Baroness Ros Altmann, a former Pensions Minister, says: ‘ Giving grandchildren gifts, paying for weddings or cancer treatment is a natural part of family life and for councils to suggest this is somehow not allowed is outrageous.

‘ Such stories are further evidence of the mounting care crisis in this country. Families and vulnerable elderly people should not be hounded by local authorities desperate to recoup care costs any way they can.’

But Owain Wright, of Care Funding Guidance, warns against trying to give away money too readily. ‘If you are successful in depriving yourself of an asset, you are condemning yourself to a lower quality of accommodation in your final years because you will be in a standard local authority care home,’ he says.