Protecting home from care home fees? Help!!!

A question about : Protecting home from care home fees? Help!!!

This is a bit long winded so I apologise firstly.

Just over 2yrs ago my mum was diagnosed with early onset altzimers at 58yrs old and a year later was put into a care home. My parents had bought there council house about 10yrs previously for about a third of the value of the house and for reasons unknown to me got a interest only mortgage which is due to end in 2016. My dad is classified disabled too now and is unable to get a new mortgage for the house. My youngest brother still lives at home.

My question is how can I protect the house should something happen to my dad before my mum. I've looked a bit into it and been told that if we (either my husband and I or my brothers and I) bought the house for the mortgage value, that the council could ask us for the difference between the mortgage value and the house value.

Any help would be amazing as I am currently based in England and with the difference in laws I can't get the information locally.

Best answers:

• Hi
  I am not sure about you having to pay back the difference to the council regards purchase price but if you or your brother do buy the house it may lead to problems.
  If one of your parents move into a care home then the house is not assessed as part of their capital. The assessment made for anyone going into care home is treated as a single person but if they have sold their assets (house) in a time period before the assessment they may be deemed to have done 'deprivation of capital' whereby the local authority class this in the assessment period and will claim care fees from anyone entering a care home.
• The first thing to establish is whether your mum and dad own the house as 'joint tenants' or 'tenants in common'. In the former case, both jointly own the whole house, and on the death of one it automatically passes to the other. In the latter, each owns a a half (or other proportion as specified) of the proprty and can leave their share to whoever they want to via a will.
  In this latter case it may be worth looking into your dad willing his share of the house to your brother - I'm not an expert, but I don't think the council could force the sale of the home to cover your mothers care home fees if he owned half the property and it was his residence