Property Protection Trusts and Care Home Fees: An Honest Answer

Care home fees are the reason a lot of people first hear the words “property protection trust”, usually through an advert promising to protect the family home from being sold to pay for care. The truth is more limited, and more honest, than the marketing. A property protection trust can protect your share of the home for your children, but it cannot make your own care free. This article explains exactly where the line falls, because getting it wrong is expensive.

What a Property Protection Trust Actually Protects

A property protection trust holds your share of the family home for your chosen beneficiaries, usually your children, while your surviving partner carries on living there. When you and your partner own the home as tenants in common, each of you owns a distinct share, and each can leave that share in trust rather than outright to the survivor.

The protection is real, but it is specific. What is protected is your share, for your children, after you have died. Your partner’s right to live in the home is preserved, and your half is guaranteed to reach your children in the end, whatever happens to your partner afterwards.

Why It Cannot Avoid Your Own Care Fees

Here is the part the adverts skip. A trust created by your Will does not exist until you have died. While you are alive, it is not there to protect anything. So it cannot shelter your own assets, including your own share of the home, from an assessment for your own care. There is no version of a Will Trust that changes that, because the timing makes it impossible.

If a scheme promises to protect your own home from your own care fees, it is almost certainly a lifetime trust, set up while you are alive, not a trust in your Will. Deliberately moving assets out of your reach to reduce a care assessment can be treated by a local authority as deliberate deprivation of assets, in which case the value is counted as though you never gave it away. The scheme then protects nothing, having cost you fees and control along the way.

Do Care Fees Ever Genuinely Come Into It?

There is a narrower, legitimate point, and it is worth stating carefully. Because your share passes into the trust on your death rather than to your partner outright, it becomes your children’s protected share and is no longer part of your partner’s estate. If your surviving partner later needs residential care, their own assets can be assessed, but your protected share is not theirs to be assessed or spent. That protects your children’s inheritance of your half from being consumed by the survivor’s later care costs.

That is a by-product of protecting your children’s share, not a personal care-fee avoidance device, and it turns on details like how the home is owned and the terms of the trust. It is exactly the kind of thing to work through with proper advice rather than to assume from an advert.

The rules on care funding and trusts change over time and depend on your circumstances. Always take current, tailored advice before relying on any of this.

How Should You Weigh Property Protection Trusts and Care Fees?

The sensible way to approach property protection trusts and care fees is to separate the two questions. Do you want to protect your share of the home for your children, whatever happens to your partner after you die? A property protection trust can do that well. Do you want to avoid paying for your own care? No Will Trust can do that, and anything that promises to is worth walking away from.

A free consultation is there to give you the honest version, protect what can genuinely be protected, and keep you clear of schemes that promise more than the law allows.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a property protection trust stop the council taking my house for care fees?

Not for your own care. A property protection trust in a Will cannot protect your own assets from your own care assessment, because it does not exist until you have died. It protects your share of the home for your children after your death, which is a different and legitimate purpose.

If my partner goes into care, is my share safe?

Generally your share is protected, because it passed into trust for your children on your death and is no longer your partner’s to be assessed or spent. Your partner’s own assets can still be assessed for their care. The exact position depends on how the home is owned and the trust’s terms, so take advice.

Are the care-fee protection schemes advertised online safe?

Treat them with real caution. Most are lifetime trusts, not Will Trusts, and deliberately moving assets to reduce a care assessment can be treated as deliberate deprivation of assets, which defeats the purpose. Anyone selling a trust primarily as a way to avoid your own care fees should be questioned closely.

TL;DR: Property Protection Trusts and Care Home Fees

A property protection trust protects your share of the home for your children after you die, but it cannot make your own care free, and the schemes that promise to shield your own home are lifetime trusts carrying real risk.

• It protects your share of the home for your children, not your own assets from your own care.
• A Will Trust does not exist until you die, so it cannot affect your own care assessment.
• Your protected share is not your surviving partner’s to be assessed if they later need care.
• Lifetime care-fee schemes risk being treated as deliberate deprivation of assets.
• Take advice, and be sceptical of any trust sold as a way to avoid your own care costs.