Property Protection Trust Will Package (PPT)
Property Protection Trust Will Package (PPT)
Protect your share of your home from a forced sale to fund future care fees. Protect your children’s inheritance from loss due to divorce, bankruptcy and marriage after death creating a sideways disinheritance.
- 2 x Wills
- 2 x Protective Property/Life Interest Will Trusts
- 2 x Property & Financial Lasting Power of Attorneys
- 2 x Health & Welfare Lasting Power of Attorneys
- All Land Registry searches and SEV application to enter a restriction
- Declaration of Severance of Tenancy
- (information based on a married couple)
Increasing numbers of homeowners are choosing to hold their properties as Tenants in Common to reduce inheritance tax and help protect their share from care fees.
The Property Protection Trust Will Package is based around how you hold the ownership of your home. All good estate planning nowadays considers the difference between owning your home as joint tenants or as tenants in common.
If you own your home as joint Tenants; when one of you dies the ownership of the home passes by the Law Survivorship and not by your Will. Therefore, the surviving partner will automatically own 100% of the property. This sounds right to most people. BUT should the surviving partner need care in the future, the Local Authority can take everything they own (including their home} to pay for the care fees, leaving just £14,250 to be inherited by the children and grandchildren.
Nowadays many couples choose to own their home as Tenants in Common where each partner will own 50% of the family home. This provides for many benefits. Firstly, it allows you to legally leave your share of the property in your Will to whoever you wish. A properly written Will can ensure that your half of your house will eventually pass to your children even if your surviving spouse re-marries.
Unmarried cohabiting couples or relatives living together can also use this means of ownership as a way of minimising their Inheritance Tax exposure.
It can also help with long-term care costs. If one of you is still in your home the Local Authority can’t include its value in the means test if one of you has to go in to long-term care. This also applies if the husband or wife still living at horne dies while the other is in care as their share will go into the trust
- On first death, the deceased's share of the property is passed into their Family Trust via the Will
- The surviving spouse/partner continues to live in the property and is still able to move home if they choose to do so
- In the event that the survivor enters care, the survivor only owns a half share of a house. Section 7.019 of the CRAG Regulations confirms that the value of a half share of a house is effectively NIL for the purposes of the assessment for care