Even the PRESS say RELY ON A TRUST
We have many Normal clients in the Essex, South Essex, Billericay, Brentwood, Shenfield, Ingatestone, Chelmsford, Southend, Basildon that have worked hard for what they have and want to protect their family…
They read and have heard of a lot about trusts but get told these don’t work…. Well here in the Press they talk about using these for the right reasons and doing them early enough to make sure they work.
For Example: An elderly person could transfer the ownership of a property into a lifetime discretionary trust. This would allow you to go on living in it, with the ownership of the property going to a relative on your death. Again, this has to be done early and as part of estate planning strategy which K & CO Estate Planning can help with.
The most common form of trust is a life interest trust, whereby half the value of your home, up to the inheritance tax threshold, is put into a trust on the death of the first spouse, for the benefit of children. The surviving spouse retains a life interest and the property cannot be sold until they die.
Revealed: How 10,000 families are paying massive care home bills they don’t need to … and how to make sure it doesn’t happen to YOU
As a leading theatre director, 74-year-old Glen Walford has spent her long working life touring the world. But whenever she returned to Britain, she always knew she had a home — the pretty red-brick house in the Worcestershire countryside where she grew up.
Her childhood bedroom was still there, as well as her office and outbuildings filled with her belongings. But when Miss Walford’s elderly mother, Mary, broke her hip in 2006 and had to go into a care home, the local council ruled that Miss Walford was only an infrequent visitor to the property — and therefore the house belonged exclusively to her mother, who would have to sell it to pay for her care fees.
When Miss Walford argued it was her home, too — a place she had recently spent some £40,000 doing up and where she intended to retire — the council even sent staff to snoop around the place.
They reported that there were ‘no photos of family or friends’, and that it appeared ‘depersonalised’.
Thankfully, following a landmark ruling in the High Court, the decision by Worcestershire County Council was recently overturned. But the battle to keep her home has been a long and exhausting one for Miss Walford, who tearfully told the court of her ‘dear wish to be able to keep a much-loved house in the family’.
The court’s finding will resonate with many thousands of families struggling to negotiate the complex rules surrounding the funding of care.
So if you would like to make sure you and your family are looked after and protected as much as you can be then contact K & Co Estate Planning on contact@keily.legal or call 01277841152