Take action now to safeguard your property in the future

Are you ready to lose your home to pay for care? The obvious answer is “no” – but if you go into a care home you could lose your house.

It is a worrying thought. However, there are legitimate ways you can stop your property being sold to meet care home costs.

Do you know what your options are? If not, estate planning experts like ILAWS Scotland can help. Already, ILAWS has helped its clients navigate their way around this rather complicated subject. And, in doing so, properties stay in the family and are passed down, just as their homeowners would have wanted. Those who have sought help do not regret it, as it literally saves them a fortune, and costs them a lot less than they think.

Do nothing and you could lose your home, says Tony Marchi, principal at ILAWS. That’s because we are living longer, which means more and more people are going into a care home. And if you have more than £29,750 in assets (this includes the value of your property), then you will need to pay the local authority for your care.

The cost of care fees varies from local authority to local authority, as councils set their own rates for the care homes they own but it can be more than £800 a week for nursing care and more than £700 a week for residential care.

Do you know how you will fund your care when or if the time comes? If you have money to pay for your care home fees other than from selling your home, you can use that. If not, you may need to sell your home to pay for your care, but there are circumstances in which your house will not be included in the financial assessment. Speak to the experts at ILAWS to find out more.

You still have time to make legal tweaks in your financial plans to avoid this. Sadly, as you’ll read here, not everyone manages to put a plan in place in time.