Relative gifting money

Hi OP, they can gift as much to you as they like in one go now, however the local authorities can request to see historic bank statements if they go into care and they may deem it that they gave you that money to avoid paying for long term care costs. (Though no idea why...)

The seven year rule another poster mentioned refers only to Inheritance Tax (which won’t apply anyway in your in-laws case as it sounds like their joint estate is under the IHT threshold of £650k for a married couple with no main residence).

PM me if you want to go into more detail. This is an area that

that...
 
Isnt it taxable (upon death) within 7 years of receiving it if you did it legitimately?
That’s on gifts in the seven years prior to death if their estate is over the double nil rate band (£650k) and refers to IHT and not long term care costs.
 
Your problem is if your parents go into care the authorities have absolute power to investigate their accounts and they can decide the gifts were done to avoid care costs and take them into consideration as your parent's assets. There is no statute of limitations on this.
It is called deprivation of assets and is described here.


https://www.ageuk.org.uk/informatio...paying-for-a-care-home/deprivation-of-assets/

However If they have separate bank accounts they can each have £23250 in each account and not be eligible for care costs if one goes into care.
So if they only have £35000 of savings they just need to rearrange their bank accounts out of a joint account and put £17500 in two separate accounts.
This cannot be challenged because they aren’t removing assets, just organising them to their benefit.
 
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Ok so just wondering if anyone has any advice on this.

Mother and father in law both in their 70's and in poor health, live in privately rented accomodation. They have approached my wife asking her if she will open an account in her name that they can then transfer a chunk of their savings into. Just to be clear this isn't a gift to my wife, they are wanting to remove savings in case anything happens to them health wise and the government come after them to pay for their care.

They are asking my wife and i to set up a joint account but for them to have the cards etc.. so in effect it would be their account but in our name and they would continue to add and remove funds as required, looking at £35k+.

To confuse matters they also have a son who is disabled and on benefits, he won't open an account or accept any cash into his account as it would affect his benefits.

We obviously want to help and are getting pressure do put this in place as quickly as possible but i can see this becoming a real mess further down the line.

We are being told that they could "gift £3k per year to both me and my wife each year and also backdate this by one year. As such by January there could be £18k gifted, the trouble being that we would not want this going into our regular account.

Anyone any advice on how to go about this.
You are right to seek proper advice as you don't want the shit to hit the fan in years to come .Plus you don't want to be in a position where you could be acused of using the money for your own purposes as it would be you and your wife drawing out the money .Make sure you receipt and document all transactions ..To be fair you will only be doing what 10s of thousands of other relatives do as oviously they don't want there life savings snatched from them .good luck with it.
 
You are right to seek proper advice as you don't want the shit to hit the fan in years to come .Plus you don't want to be in a position where you could be acused of using the money for your own purposes as it would be you and your wife drawing out the money .Make sure you receipt and document all transactions ..To be fair you will only be doing what 10s of thousands of other relatives do as oviously they don't want there life savings snatched from them .good luck with it.

This is what concerns me most, we wouldn't be drawing the money out. Her mum and her husband would have the cards even though the account was in our name, in the event of anything happening to them i don't want my brother in laws family accusing us of dipping into the pot.
 

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