So you have worked hard all your Life, paid the mortgage off and want to leave the kids an Inheritance. You better be careful. Have you thought what would happen if you went into long term care. The government have identified that there is over £450 Billion pounds worth of equity in homes in the UK owned by people over 65. Why do this survey.Becausee the government want to get their hands on your assets if you go into care. More and more people are living longer and longer. More and more people are going into care so the government have to fund this high cost form somewhere.Your house that's where.
But if you have planned properly you can save some or all of it. Simply by changing the way you own your property you can shelter most of it via your wills. How can this be. Well let me explain. By setting up what is known as a property trust in your Wills and splitting the ownership 50/50 (if you are married or with a partner) on first death the 50% owned by the decaesed is passed into a trust with the remaining spouse a beneficiary and trustee of the trust. This is set up in such a way that the remaining spouse has a life time interest and can not be removed from the property at any time. They can also move i.e. buy and sell another house but the trust always has first call on the property. This means that if the remianig spouse were to go into care then at leasts 50% of the property is protected if not all.
Please note that this does not work for Inheritance tax purposes. I will cover that in a latter article.
If any one would like to discuss this or would like more information please visit this link
http://www.estplan.co.uk/protecting.htm or call me at the office on 0161 480 4441