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Property disregards

If you’ve been assessed as needing permanent residential care and you own a property, which was your normal or main home, consideration has to be given as to whether that property needs to be included within your financial assessment. In some circumstances your property will not be included within the financial assessment.

There are several circumstances when your property will be disregarded. The circumstances which result in your property being disregarded are listed below.

Automatic property disregard

Where one of the following people had lived in the property as their main home, continuously since before you moved into residential care by:

  • your partner, former partner or civil partner, except if you are estranged from that person
  • a lone parent who is your estranged or divorced partner
  • a relative of yours who is over 60
  • your child and aged under 18

A relative is defined as:

  • a parent or parent-in-law
  • son or son-in-law
  • daughter or daughter-in-law
  • stepparent
  • stepson or stepdaughter
  • brother or sister
  • spouse, civil partner or unmarried partner of any of the above relatives
  • grandparent
  • grandchild
  • uncle or aunt
  • nephew or niece

Mandatory property disregard

If your property cannot be automatically disregarded indefinitely, then the property may be disregarded for 12 weeks in certain circumstances. This is where you’re in permanent residential care and all your other assets are below the lower capital limit - currently £23,250.

This may apply when you first enter a care home as a permanent resident or when the automatic property disregard has unexpectedly ended because your relative has died or moved into a care home.

Discretionary property disregard

We may consider a 12-week disregard where there has been a sudden and unexpected change in your financial circumstances.

An example of this may be that you were paying for your care in a home without our financial assistance and then due to a stock market crash you lose a substantial amount of money meaning you are unable to continue meeting the cost of your care.

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