This is the fear that sits under almost every conversation about care. Will they take the house?
The honest answer is that a council can register a legal charge against a property to recover unpaid care costs, and it does happen. The rest of the answer, which is where the useful detail lives, is that whether it happens depends on facts that are often within a family’s control if they know to ask early enough.
What a charge actually is
It is a security registered at the Land Registry against the property, in the same way a mortgage is. It does not transfer ownership and it does not usually force an immediate sale. What it does is guarantee that the council is repaid when the property is eventually sold or when the estate is administered.
Families most often learn about it when a letter arrives, which is why it feels like something done to them rather than something explained.
When property counts in the means test
England uses two capital limits, and they have not moved in cash terms since 2010.
Above £23,250, you pay for your own care in full. Below £14,250, your capital is ignored, although your income is still assessed. Between the two, you contribute a tariff income of £1 a week for every £250 of capital above the lower limit.
Whether the house is counted as capital is the pivotal question, and it turns on who lives in it.
When the home is disregarded
The value of the property must be disregarded if any of the following people still live there as their main home:
- A spouse, civil partner or partner.
- A close relative aged 60 or over.
- A close relative who is incapacitated.
- A child of the resident aged under 18.
- A former partner who is a lone parent.
The council also has discretion to disregard the property in other situations, for example where a carer who is not a close relative has been living there and giving up their home would be unreasonable. Discretion means it is worth asking rather than assuming.
There is also a mandatory 12-week property disregard when someone first moves permanently into a care home. For those twelve weeks the council ignores the property’s value while calculating what you pay. It exists specifically to stop families making a panicked decision about selling in the first fortnight, and it is the window in which to work out what you actually want to do.
It is not only care homes
A point that catches people out. Care at home is also chargeable, and unpaid charges can be recovered in the same way.
In practice the property you live in is not usually counted as capital while you are still living in it, which is the main protection for people receiving care at home. But the debt itself is real, and a council can seek to secure it.
What to ask, and when
Ask before the care starts, not after the invoices do. In writing, to adult social care:
“Will the value of the property be taken into account in the financial assessment? If so, in what circumstances could a charge be registered against it, and what alternatives are available?”
Ask specifically about the 12-week disregard and about a deferred payment agreement, which is the arrangement designed to avoid a forced sale. Ask which disregards apply given who else lives in the property.
A warning about avoidance
People ask whether transferring the house to the children solves this. It generally does not, and it can make things considerably worse.
Councils have powers to treat capital as still belonging to you if they decide it was disposed of deliberately to avoid care charges. There is no fixed time limit on how far back they can look, and a deprivation of assets finding means you are assessed as though you still own the property while no longer actually having it. Trust schemes marketed for this purpose carry the same risk.
If you want to plan around care costs, do it with a solicitor who is STEP-qualified, well in advance and for reasons that stand up independently of care funding.
If you are not in England
Care funding is devolved and the differences are substantial rather than cosmetic. Scotland provides free personal and nursing care as flat weekly payments regardless of income or assets, and its capital limits are more generous than England’s. Wales uses a single capital limit and caps the weekly charge for care at home. Northern Ireland runs its care system through Health and Social Care Trusts rather than councils. Everything below describes England. If you are elsewhere, start with Care Information Scotland, the Welsh Government social care pages or nidirect, because the thresholds quoted here will not apply to you.
Where FamilySafe fits
Financial assessments, disregard decisions and any charge registered against a property are documents your family will need long after the event, particularly whoever ends up administering the estate. FamilySafe keeps them with the property record rather than in a drawer nobody can find.
Sources
- Care Act 2014 and the Care and Support (Charging and Assessment of Resources) Regulations 2014
- Care and support statutory guidance, annex B on treatment of capital and annex E on deprivation of assets
- Age UK factsheet 38: property and paying for residential care
This is general information about how care funding works, not financial advice. Rates and thresholds change every April. Check the current figures on GOV.UK or with your local council, and take regulated advice before making a decision about a property or long-term funding.
