All you need to know about care home fees

Your home is your biggest financial assets, so the prospect of having it – and other savings –potentially being seized to pay for care home fees can be concerning.

It is a complex issue which depends various factors, but if you end up in care and cannot pay for it yourself (care home fees could amount to £50,000 a year) your home and/or assets could be taken to cover the costs.

Tony Marchi, principal at ILAWS Scotland, explains that even if your mortgage is paid off, and only one partner named on your assets goes into a care home, you could find yourself in the position of losing your property. That’s why it is always worth speaking to experts like those at ILAWS to discuss what options may be open to you, from a Power of Attorney (POA) to a Property Protection Trust (PPT) or Title Transfer.

Legal documents like these cannot be organised overnight – for example, it can take up to 14 weeks for the courts to process a POA, or longer if there are any backlogs like those caused by Covid-19 – so don’t delay if you are considering taking legal steps to safeguard your assets and prepare for your future.