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All my worldly goods: a study of the operation of the 'liable relative rules' when a spouse goes into residential or nursing home care
- Authors:
- THOMPSON Pauline, WRIGHT Fay
- Publisher:
- Age Concern
- Publication year:
- 2000
- Pagination:
- 59p.
- Place of publication:
- London
This research report looks at the effects of the "liable relative" rules relating to the spuses of people in long-term care. This rule allows local authorities and the Department of Social Security to request (and if necessary enforce) payments from spouses if residents in residential or nursing care receive state funding. Currently 11% of individuals in care homes (approximately 50,000 people)are married, of which 33,500 are estimated to be receiving state funding. The research examined current local authority practices by undertaking a postal survey of all local authorities in England, telephone follow-up interviews with selected social services finance officers, and interviews with a small number of spouses of affected by this rule. The research found that there was a wide variation in how this rule was implemented between authorities, and that it was often only the most vulnerable spouses, who through guilt and a lack of information, who ended up paying the most. The recommendations of the report are that it should be legally impossible for the DSS or local authorities to demand payment from the spouse of a person in long-term state-funded residential or nursing care.
Older couples and long-term care: the financial implications of one spouse entering private or voluntary residential or nursing home care
- Authors:
- HANCOCK Ruth, WRIGHT Fay
- Journal article citation:
- Ageing and Society, 19(2), March 1999, pp.209-237.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
A minority of older people who move into long-term institutional care are married and have spouses who continue living in the community. This article uses data from the Family Expenditure Survey on the incomes of older married couples to examine the financial implications for couples of one spouse entering residential or nursing home care, taking into account local authority procedures for assessing residents' contributions to charges and Income Support rules as they apply to both spouse. It looks in particular at the consequences of alternative ways couples might share their incomes, and alternative treatments of such sharing by local authorities and the Department of Social Security.