This piece first appeared in Saga Magazine in December 1998
The text here may not be identical to the published text

Questions, Answers


Replies to readers' letters



I have been saying for some months now that, regrettably, I can no longer answer your letters individually - there are just too many. But some of you still write and there are a number of questions that crop up again and again. So this month I’m going to answer some of them here.

STATE PENSION FOR WOMEN
And I'll start with the old chestnut - actually an e-mail - from Rita somewhere in cyberspace.

"Can you please settle an office debate about state pensions. A colleague (56) has only ever paid a married woman's National Insurance contribution. Will she get a state pension at 60?"

If your colleague has only paid the married woman's contribution then she will have no right to a pension of her own when she reaches the state pension age for women - 60. However, there are two ways she may get a pension. First, she may be able to get a pension on her husband's contributions. If he is 65 and drawing his state pension when she reaches 60 she will be entitled to a married woman's pension on his contributions. That pension is £38.70 - compared with the full pension of £64.70. If her husband will not be drawing his state pension when she is 60, then she will have to wait until he does before she can get this married woman's pension.

However, as an alternative she may find she can get a small pension of her own. If she HAD paid any full national insurance contributions - perhaps before her marriage - then she may have paid enough to get a reduced pension on those contributions. And at 56 she could change to full contributions for three years and that may be enough to tip the balance to getting a small pension of her own. She should take advice from the Department of Social Security IN WRITING on this point. When she eventually gets the full pension on her husband's contributions, her own smaller pension will be absorbed into it.

Finally, if your colleague worked between 1961 and 1975 she will have some graduated retirement benefit. And if she worked after 1978 and did not pay into a superannuation scheme she will probably have some State Earnings Related Pension Scheme pension. Both of these can be drawn at 60 and both are kept on top of her married woman's pension.

CARE HOMES
I get more letters about care home fees than any other topic. And the big worry is how savings or a house of your own affects what help you get. There is a book to be written on this subject - though it would have to be loose-leaf as the Government keeps changing the rules! But there is space to deal briefly with some common questions. Like this one from Mrs T, an 83-year-old widow from Devon.

"My bungalow is worth about £35,000 and I have around £7000 in the bank. I am in good health but if I have to go into a residential care home what would my capital be - £7000 or £42,000?"

If you go into a care home, the value of an empty property is counted as your capital. So the simple answer is £42,000. However, there are ways for it to be ignored. If a close relative who is disabled OR aged 60 or more lives there, the value is ignored. And if a younger person who is a co-owner lives there, then the value is also ignored. And of course in other circumstances if your spouse still lived there its value would be ignored. So in all these cases, the answer to your question would be £7000. And if your capital is below £10,000 the local social services department will pay your fees in full - though it will also take most of your weekly income in exchange. So it may be worth moving someone in!

Mr HB of Gloucestershire asks a more difficult question. He is now widowed and has moved in with his daughter and sold his house.

"Can I give my daughter the proceeds of the sale - around £60,000 - without incurring too many problems?"

If you do go into a care home in the future - and remember that four out of five people never do so - then you may be asked why you gave your daughter the £60,000. If one reason for giving it to her was to increase the help you got from the state, then the local social services department could say you had deliberately deprived yourself of it and refuse to give you any help. But if manage to stay out of home for at least five years, and maybe as little as two years, you should be safe.

Frances in Hampshire has similar family circumstances but she is the daughter and it is her mother, who has lived with her for nearly four years, who has £70,000 in the bank. Frances asks

"If I applied the weekly charge most homes do to her capital, £315 a week, it would now be below the £10,000 to enable her to get full help from the council. Can I do that?"

Sadly, no. If you are caring for her on a non-commercial basis all you can ask her to pay are the actual expenses of looking after her and a reasonable share of the costs of the home - council tax, telephone, electricity, gas, water and so on. Anything else would probably come under the 'deprivation' rule mentioned above.

Philip writes from Middlesex asking if he can pay me to answer his question. No. But here is the answer anyway!

"My mother-in-law entered residential care in November 1995 and put her house on the market. It has just been sold and she has repaid the local authority for the care fees over that three years. That has left her with capital, including her savings, of around £24,000. My query is:- can she retain the interest she has earned on her savings so far - around £720 - and the interest she will earn on this £24,000? Or does that count as part of her 'capital' too?"

Good question, Philip and the answer is the interest DOES form part of her capital. Interest is ignored as income but counts as part of the capital as soon as it is earned. So while her capital will diminish rapidly as she pays her weekly care fees, it will also be topped up slightly each time the interest is added on by the bank. Sorry.

One further point is worth making. If you or a relative has to go into a care home and you leave an empty property that is counted as capital, remember that you do not HAVE to sell it. You could keep it and rent it out. The local authority would pay your fees but it would tot up the bill for when the home was eventually sold and would reclaim the debt then. But the council is not allowed to charge interest on this debt while the person in the care home is still alive. At current property prices and with a strong rental market, the income from the house could even be enough to pay the fees - it would certainly make a big contribution towards them. That makes better use of the capital than selling up, repaying the debt, and paying the fees out of the diminishing balance in the bank.

DISABILITY BENEFITS
Tim writes from Lancashire about his wife who had a stroke in 1980. She gets disability living allowance in two parts - £13.60 a week to help with her care needs and £35.85 a week to pay for extra mobility costs. Tim wrote to the Benefits Agency to ask if his wife's benefit could be increased in the light of recent changes in the law about what constitutes 'care needs'. Care must involve what are called 'bodily functions'. But recent test cases have extended the definition of those to include some social activities as well.

"They sent us a fresh claim pack which was irrelevant as her medical condition hasn’t changed. Now they have informed us that the claim cannot be looked at again. What is the next step? The reply from the DSS might well have come from a computer!"

It probably did, Tim. There is always a danger in asking for disability benefit to be reviewed. If your wife's condition has improved then any fresh look at her entitlement could result in her losing rather than gaining money. The court cases I wrote about (see Saga Magazine July 1997 - also available through my web-site - see below) MAY help other disabled people but they actually concerned the extra attention needed by people who were deaf, blind or incontinent. The judge said

"The test, in my view, is whether the attention is reasonably required to enable the severely disabled person as far as reasonably possible to live a normal life...Social life in the sense of mixing with others, taking part in activities with others, undertaking recreation and cultural activities can be part of a normal life."

To move from the rate of benefit she currently gets to the next level, Tim's wife will have to show that she needs frequent attention throughout the day with her bodily functions, including the extended meaning of that as set out by the judge. She should ask for a review in the light of the Halliday case, 21 May 1997 in the House of Lords. If that is refused she should appeal. It is a good idea to get help with that. In your case, Tim, why not try The Stroke Association, Whitecross Street, London EC1Y 8JJ telephone 0171 490 7999. Or go to your local Citizen's Advice Bureau.

December 1998


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