Protecting Your Home from Care Fees
A Life Interest Trust in your Wills can protect half the family home for your children.
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The concern we hear most
Most couples we visit have already heard something about care fees — from the news, from something they’ve read online, from a friend whose parents went into a home. The worry is usually the same: after a lifetime of paying for the house, will it have to be sold, leaving nothing for the children?
There’s no way to make a home invisible to a care assessment, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something. But there is something sensible and entirely legitimate you can do, and it’s written into your Wills.
How you own your home matters
There are two ways to own a property together, and the difference decides what your Will can do.
Joint tenants
You own the whole home together, rather than a share each. When one of you dies, the other automatically owns all of it — and your Will has no say in it at all. Most couples own this way without ever having chosen it; it’s simply the default when you buy together.
Tenants in common
You each own a distinct share, usually half. Nothing changes about living there or owning it together — but your share now passes under your Will, to whoever you name. That’s what makes everything below possible.
Nothing else on this page works unless you’re tenants in common.
The plan of action
Three straightforward steps, and we guide you through each one.
Sever the joint tenancy
You each own a defined half instead of the whole thing jointly. Nothing changes in practice — you both still live there, you both still own it. It’s paperwork, not upheaval.
£195
Add a Life Interest Trust
Each Will directs that half into a trust rather than leaving it to the survivor outright. Nothing is given away, and nothing takes effect while you’re both here.
£175
Sign, and leave it to us
We send you a clear signing guide, or we can arrange the signing and witnessing for you. Either way, nothing is left for you to work out on your own.
Included
These are the costs of the trust and the severance. Your Wills are priced separately — see our Wills pricing.
What this means for care fees
The honest version, including the part most people aren’t told.
If the surviving husband or wife later needs residential care, the local authority looks at what they own. The half sitting in the trust isn’t theirs — they have the right to live there, but they don’t own it and can’t sell it. So it isn’t counted in their assessment, and it stays protected for your children.
Their own half still is counted. If care is needed, that share can still be used to pay for it.
So this protects half the value of your home, not all of it. That’s the truthful answer, and in our experience it’s the one people want — a guaranteed half is worth a great deal more than a promise of everything that doesn’t survive scrutiny.
If your husband or wife remarries
The one people rarely ask about, and often the reason they go ahead.
If you leave everything to each other outright, the survivor owns the whole home. Should they remarry, that marriage revokes their Will — and without a new one, much of what you built can pass to a new husband or wife, and from there to their family. Your children can be left with very little, entirely by accident. It’s common enough to have a name: sideways disinheritance.
A Life Interest Trust prevents it. Your half is committed to your children from the outset, so it was never the survivor’s to leave to anyone else.
Most couples haven’t considered this until we raise it. It’s rarely about mistrust — nobody expects to be the one who dies first.
Your Will is written by a full member of the Society of Will Writers, working to their Code of Practice and holding full professional indemnity insurance. We’re professional Will writers rather than solicitors — the same legally sound documents, usually at a lower fixed fee.
What this plan achieves
It seeks to protect one half of the home — the half that can genuinely be protected, without putting anything at risk. It doesn’t shield the survivor’s own half from care costs, and no legitimate arrangement can guarantee to protect the whole property. It isn’t a lifetime transfer of your home: schemes that promise more often rely on giving the property away, which councils can treat as deliberate deprivation of assets and set aside.
Set up properly and in advance, while you’re both able to make the decision, it’s designed to keep half the home protected and secure. This is worth considerably more than a promise of the whole that may not survive scrutiny.
Part of your wider estate plan
Keeping your Will current is one piece of good estate planning. Many of our clients also hold a Lasting Power of Attorney, so someone they trust can act for them if they ever can’t.
Have a read first
Our free guide, Protecting a Share of Your Home, explains how joint ownership works, what a Life Interest Trust does, and what can and can’t be protected. No email address needed.
Protecting your home from care fees — common questions
This is an approach many professionals caution against. Giving your home away while you’re alive can be treated as deliberate deprivation of assets, and it can create problems of its own. A Life Interest Trust works differently: it sits in your Will and takes effect only on death, so nothing leaves your hands while you’re here.
Very little. You both still live there and you both still own the home. The only real change is on paper — instead of owning the whole property jointly, you each own a defined half that passes under your own Will.
Yes. The trust lives in your Wills, so you’ll each make one containing it. Most couples do this as part of a wider review — guardians, executors, who inherits what — rather than treating it as a single change.
Not directly, but the two work together. Your Wills decide what happens after death; an LPA lets someone you trust act for you while you’re alive if you ever can’t — including dealing with your share of the home. Most couples we help with a Life Interest Trust put LPAs in place at the same time, so both sides are covered.
Ready to take the first step?
Not sure where to begin? That’s exactly what we’re here for. Tell us a little about your situation and we’ll point you the right way — no pressure, no obligation.