New member with a money dilema

New to Carers Connect
1

Greetings to the forum. A new 63 yr old member struggling with a highly difficult elderly mother. My story in brief. 5 yrs ago I returned to the family home after 25 years abroad to care for my 85 yr old mother who was in a vulnerable situation due to very poor sight, Osteoporosis and limited independence. This worked well for over 4 years, I did not pay rent but I have invested considerable time and effort into restoring the home and gardens to its former glory and adapting the home to mums needs while taking care of all mums affairs and general household management. She wants for nothing. I was able to hold on to a good full time job until Aug last year when mum had a bad fall resulting in emergency hip surgery. Since then I have had no choice but to give up work to provide 24/7 care for mum as she can no longer be left alone for a real fear of falling. I have already sacrificed my own independence and now my income. I have no social life and no hope of entering into a relationship. Life as I knew it is on hold. I get Carers Allowance and UC which adds up to £488 per month. I pay half the utility bills, weekly groceries and maintain a car to provide household mobility.

Mum is not short of money and has provisioned well for her old age with a healthy bank account, considerable savings and good monthly income. She also gets Attendance Allowance. Here is my dilema. Is it reasonable for me to have a serious talk with mum and ask that she subsidise my loss of income to where it was when I had to stop work ? I feel I have sacrificed enough to care for her and I dont see why I should suffer financially when she can well afford to compensate me for my financial loss. My brother, who does absolutely nothing for her care, is being difficult over this as he feels it would be “Profiteering” and my argument is its “Justifiable compensation” as I’m doing all the work and suffering.

Mum is hard work and generally not a nice person at all, very miserable and sometimes abusive. Talking about money matters is a very combustible subject and is very protective of her money, going there is a minefield. She can not get any Council or NHS home care as it means tested and she does not qualify. Here’s the thing, if I went back to work full time, mum would require private care at a cost of approx. £3,400 pm, probably more. If the current arrangement continues with an income subsidy, I can provide quality live in care 24/7 for £1,200 pm. To me it’s a no brainer but getting my brother too see sense is proving impossible.

I would be interested to hear from any other members who may be in a similar situation and I would welcome any advice from members and their thoughts on this matter.

Thanks.

2

It is MUM’S house, you are MUM’s carer and she should be paying ALL the housing costs, your food, and the cost of the car!

If you did not care for her she would need 24/7 care in a nursing home, costing £1,000+, so this would rapidly diminish her assets. Find three local nursing homes, establish their costs for a “self funding resident”. Just ring up and ask.
Then take a week on holiday, so mum then has a choice, either carers come in, brother moves in, or she tries residential care.
They will welcome you back with open arms.
Alternatively, ask mum to formally give you half the house in return for the care you give. Whilst you, as an over 60 son, live there, the council cannot take the value of her house into consideration when assessing her ability to pay, so it is very important that you stay where you are. Explain this to your useless brother. (I had two of those!!) Just waiting for mum to die so they could have their share! Both disappointed that mum had changed her will and recognised the support I gave. Instead of a third each I got half, they got a quarter each.

You need to have Power of Attorney now, anything could happen to mum at her great age.
Do you have a family solicitor? They can be really useful dealing with this sort of issue.

I have written from my own experience, you need to talk to Carers UK’s helpline, help the Aged of a solicitor.

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Hello Nick

I wanted to wish you a warm welcome to the forum and to highlight some of the options for connecting with fellow carers and for getting support from Carers UK should you need it.

Carers UK are running online weekly meet ups for carers to take some time for themselves and chat to other carers. Feel free to join if you’d like to and there’s no pressure to share anything you don’t want to. I’m sure you’ll find others in a similar position to yourself.

You can find information on how to register to our online meetups at the following pages:

Care for a Cuppa: Online meetups | Carers UK
This social is a great way to have a little break if you are able to and spend some quality time talking to people who understand what you are going through right now.

Share and Learn: Share and Learn | Carers UK
These sessions range from creative writing activities to beginners Latin dance sessions.

There is also Carers UK’s helpline should you need advice or support - Our Telephone Helpline is available on 0808 808 7777 from Monday to Friday, 9am – 6pm or you can contact us by email (advice@carersuk.org)

with best wishes
Ingrid

4

Research all your options and information
Let it drop for a while, a cooling off period for everyone while you research in the background and process the information.
Email citizens advice, it is anonymous and you can get excellent advice from them for all your issues, list them and group them into categories and decide if you want to send one email or one for each category.

This is beyond my experiences but there are some thoughts below, take what you need from it, ignore the rest. Others may have more information and might correct me or add further.

Keep your powder dry, get your information, think it over, work out how you will approach it all and how you can work it all out, strategies and how to pre-empt things, plan B, C…to Z, some respite, your brother doing some care, breaks and an ‘if all else fails what next’ plan ready.

Consider things that you need such as:-
clarity of finances
finances sorted out to your fair benefit not to your disadvantage
-advice on change of deeds eg adding you and brother, signing it over to you both or selling it to you both, the advice from our solicitor a few years ago was that this is now seen as the caree defrauding themselves out of money for their care and I believe that the Gvt can demand the estate or the money from it to be paid back for their care, a good honest solicitor will state the present Gvt law and what you can and cannot do.

Clarity of estate - all the what if scenarios if care home required:-
-can you stay there? (I think at your age you are allowed to - Gvt website/solicitor advice needed and the goalposts may change over the years)
-if you stay who pays the bills - it is still your mothers estate
-can you have tenant(s) to support the bills and maintenance?

Probate clarity if care home used:-
-is the entire state liable for care reimbursement eg valuables, furniture, jewellery
-get a letter or added into the will what items your mother wants to go to people, what to who

prepaid funeral plan - she gets the service that she wants not what the Gvt deign from her estate if it comes to that or if the estate is spent then from what basic Gvt assistance there is, but if your mum pays in advance, it cannot be touched, it is in the bag, booked and sorted.
powers of attorney if you don’t have them

your brother to have some responsibility weekly/monthly
-breaks - weekends/holidays

whatever else is an issue
bottom out any foreseeable issues as much as possible

5

Thanks Breezy. I PM’d you.

Nick.