Help protect your home if you go into care
- A simple will is sometimes fine provided neither of you needs to go into care. You could each leave everything to the other and, when the second one dies, everything goes to the children.
- However, if one of you dies and the other goes into care, the local authority could take the house to pay for the care fees. This is because most people own their house jointly (ie you both own the whole house) and, when the first dies, the survivor automatically owns the whole house. Your children would be the unfortunate losers.
- To help avoid this, you can choose to own your house as tenants-in-common. This means you each own half the house and can pass it through special trust wills.
- Now take the same situation: one dies and the other goes into care. The one in care only owns half so the other half is protected. The children will therefore inherit at least half the house.
- In fact recent case law indicates that the value of the half belonging to the one needing care (providing the holders of the other half don’t want to sell their share) is effectively nil and in these circumstances the social services may not be able to charge any of the care costs against the value of the house.
- This type of will also protects the deceased’s share of the house in the event that the surviving partner remarries or if the deceased has children from a previous relationship.