Rising cost of elderly care is causing middle-aged parents to call in lawyers to make clear they would rather DIE than see their children pay to have them looked after.
Parents drawing up power of attorney deals to ensure they can refuse treatment.
Ageing parents are drawing up legal documents to state they would rather die than allow excessive care home fees to eat into their child’s inheritance.
The spiraling cost of care has led to rising numbers of middle-aged mothers and fathers taking evasive legal action to ensure they can refuse treatment at the end of their lives.
Although the above headline, borrowed from an article in the Mail, is clearly a sensationalist headline and is designed more for attention grabbing than necessarily for accuracy, it does helpfully demonstrate that in these times of increased life-expectancy and rising dementia statistics, planning for the future is more important than ever.With the average weekly cost of a room in a care home matching (if not exceeding) the average monthly cost of renting an apartment in Manchester City Centre, people need to make sure that their affairs are in order as far as possible to minimise the financial impact of care needs on their families. There are ways of doing this, such as by making sure that Powers of Attorney for both health and finances are in place, but also by ensuring that spousal Wills are prepared to make the family finances as efficient as possible. To coin a phrase, it’s all about the three Ps: ‘Preparation, Preparation, Preparation’…
