Concerned about care home fees – consider including a Property Protection Trust in your Will

15th April 2024

Are you concerned about your family not benefiting from your estate because of having to go into care? If so, you should consider using a using a Property Protection Trust in your Will. This type of trust aims to protect your home for your loved ones, especially in the context of care home fees.

For many couples, the family home is their main asset and protecting it to make sure it passes to the next generation is extremely important. This can be achieved by including a Property Protection Trust in your Will. In this type of arrangement, when one person of a couple passes away, instead of leaving their share in their home to their partner, it passes into the trust set up in a Will.

So how does this work?

In the Will, the surviving partner is given a right to use the half share of the home belonging to the person who has died. This means they can remain living in the property for the rest of their life if they wish to. However, although they have this right they are not seen as owning all of the property. This means that if they did have to go into care, at least one half of the home is protected from being used to pay for care, with the aim of protecting at least 50% of the home to pass to loved ones.

For more information please contact our friendly Private Client team who will be very happy to help.

Article written by Lead Solicitor, Private Client, Helen Strong.