Adviser, doctor and solicitor Penny O’Nions has warned that families across the UK could be held “in limbo” by an influential legal case over whether a council can take a family home to pay for care.
The court of appeal recently backed Worcestershire County Council in its bid to sell a woman’s family home to pay for her mother’s social care bills, following a lengthy legal process.
However, Ms O’Nions said it would be interesting to see if the case could yet go to the Supreme Court and said councils and families across the country would be waiting for its final outcome.
She said: “But as a case it will be good to see if the woman will appeal this because such a ruling will have a big effect on families.
“The case rests in a unique position. There are councils who do not have unlimited funds to shoulder the care burden, and there are people who abuse the system. I am sure there are families being held in limbo pending the outcome of this appeal.
“There will be councils all over the place saying ‘quick, get the money in before the next appeal goes in’.”
Ms Glen Walford’s solicitors were not able to comment on whether the matter would be taken to the Supreme Court. However, if it were, Ms O’Nions said: “The council would vehemently fight this on the basis that it will open the floodgates.”
In 2006 Ms Walford’s mother, Mary, went into long-term residential care at a council-maintained home.
The county council assessed her assets and her property was earmarked to help pay for her care.
But Mrs Walford’s daughter disputed this decision, claiming the property had been left to her by her grandmother, was her home as well as her mothers - despite keeping a rented flat in London - and that she had paid for the maintenance of the house and garden since her father’s death in 1983.
Under the rules, councils must disregard property which is “occupied in whole or in part as their home” by the resident’s partner or children.
A panel of senior judges ruled that the council had the right to sell off the house to meet its bills, claiming the rules were not intented to create a “windfall benefit” for family members who moved into a house when someone went into care.
Worcestershire County Council has said it is compelled to fight this case because of “ever increasing demands being made on the public purse”.
Adviser view
Desmond O’Driscoll, a chartered financial planner with London-based Lighthouse Financial Initiatives, said: “The idea that the family home is inviolate is wrong to me.
“I can see that care has to be paid for and this appears fairly groundless.”
