denotes premium content | Jan 9 2009 Feature
posted 15 Nov 2000 in Volume 6 Issue 1
In practice: What if?‘What if?’ is a terrible question. The time of entry of an older person into long term care is nothing if not traumatic and a very serious business. It cannot be made light of in itself. But how many readers recall the nightmare of the College of Law final exams? How many other advisers recall their own horrors? Isn’t it true that the most serious questions were always dealt with using the most silly stories imaginable?
I also recall taking my exams in Chester, that ‘small town of terror’. The examination room was made (slightly) happier by a display of 1930’s music hall humour from two old ladies in long black dresses with sequins who were supposedly invidulators. We called them ‘Hinge and Bracket’ and suspected they were former cast members of ‘ITMA’ (oldies may recall the repeats in the 1970’s) but I suspect they were just retired school teachers.
In the best tradition of ‘College of Law’ questions I pose the following really awful one. A bottle of champagne to the winner is to be supplied by that nice Mr Hussey, publisher of ECA. The best answers are to be published in the Christmas/new year edition – yes it’s almost that time of year again! (No past or present writers for ECA are eligible. No employees of arkgroup are eligible and definitely no pseudonyms!)
Important PS. If you take this too seriously you may wind up as a general contributor...
The competition
Colonel Smartie is going into care:-
1. He is an old soldier who is able to talk about his life in the army but not much else. He is an asthmatic with severe deafness, two gammy legs and double incontinence. That is not to mention encroaching dementia and the occasional nasty outburst against ‘people in authority’ or, as he calls them, ‘Huns’. He is clearly not getting any better. He is currently in hospital for the removal of a benign tumour and is ever more irascible.
He owns an investment bond with Scottish Inequitable worth £10,000. He also owns an endowment policy with Landed Life which, having been paid into for 20 years, has only a further 5 years to run. It has a surrender value of £40,000 but it can be sold early to a ‘Willin Byas Dealers in Traded Endowments’ for over £75,000.
Colonel Smartie owns £40,000 of shares in British Pistols PLC in his own name but only because his son lives in Taiwan and could not take up the share floatation offer himself. As the good Colonel says:
“They were bought by my son and just put in my name, look I have copy cheques and a letter”.
Colonel Smartie also gave his son £6,000 in 1998, which his son has never touched ‘because it is all Dad’s money’ and which Colonel Smartie says belongs to his son “really” but although he “thought he should transfer it to his son” he “cant remember why”. The local authority know about this payment because a note of the gift was accidentally copied to them by Friars and Balsam his, now former, legal advisers.
The Colonel is a beneficiary in his late aunts discretionary Will trust. She “Didn’t trust the lot of ‘em with money. Brains of pork pies”. He has received about £7,500 each year in the past but the trustees have resolved not to pay him any more “unless circumstances change.”
He owns his own house worth some £75,000 but in it now resides his old army pal Johnny Housewarmer. Johnny is only 54 and is of very modest means after being invalided out of the forces 10 years ago after a hunting accident. He saw the “old campaigner through” his last posting in the Outer Hebrides and has promised to look after ‘Gungho’, the Colonel’s aged war dog. The Colonel wants Johnny to be able to stay there rent free. Johnny has recently replaced the roof at his own expense “so as not to trouble the old boy” and because he has “always” been “guaranteed that he would get the place anyway.”
Colonel Smartie has paid all his own home fees to date and on time. He only has £15,000 left at ‘Military Bank’ and a tiny army pension due to the “odd circumstances of his final dismissal” effected quickly after a serious incendiary incident which eliminated the entire population of Mooseblaster sheep from the highlands of Scotland.
What would you do?
...if the Health Authority refuses to consider paying for his care under the NHS and simply threatens to send the Colonel to “the first available home because he is a trouble to himself and others.” ?
...if the local authority tries to take account of the investment bond in a financial assessment for home fees saying that the CRAG is “quite clear that such values must be taken into account.” ?
...if the local authority says that it will assess the value of his endowment policy, reasoning that “as the endowment is a life policy which can be sold it is not a disregarded asset because it need not be surrendered to realise a value.” ?
...if the local authority say that the shares of his son are his and must be assessed “because they are in the name of Colonel Smartie.” ?
...if the local authority says that the £6,000 gift to his son is to be assessed as belonging to Colonel Smartie under a ‘resulting trust.’ ?
...if the local authority says that the £7,500 per annum from the Will trust “must continue” as “otherwise there will be a deprivation of benefit and he will he be assessed on the value anyway.” ?
...if the local authority says that they have no discretion to allow Johnny to stay in the Colonels house “even if they wanted to” and that the “guarantee to stay there given by the Colonel was worthless” and that “there is a very nice top floor flat down town which is free for Johnny to go to. There is a lift, a concierge but no dogs allowed…” ?
He has paid his home fees to date but the local authority now say that even though his cash at ‘Military Bank’ is only £15,000 they will not help him because he “has far too much money”. In fact they are going to place a charge on his house. “We will recover it!” they say…
What would you say and who should get the bill?
Compiled by David Coldrick
