Later-life care

Switch care on and you set who might need it, what kind, when it starts, how long it lasts and how dear it is. Landfall applies that nation’s financial assessment, often called the means test, and shows what the household pays. From State Pension age the assessment counts a pension as the annuity income it could buy, not as savings. With the assessment off the household pays every fee.

Your home is never counted towards care fees while you or a partner live in it. It comes into the reckoning only for someone who moves into a care home for good with nobody left at home, after a short grace period. Landfall then uses a deferred payment. Savings above the nation’s savings limit pay first, then income, less an allowance the person keeps. The rest of the fee becomes a debt on the home, with interest where the nation charges it, repaid from the estate. Nothing is sold. What the family receives falls by the debt, and inheritance tax can fall with it.

If a relative who lived there before still does, the home stays out. Each care episode has a choice for that, “Someone else lives in the home”. Northern Ireland has no formal scheme, so there the same shape is an approximation.