Where I am at the moentn

A summary of what’s going on.

Apparently because my mother had money in various accounts, Devon Social Services did not have to do a proper financial assessment. They only bother with those when there isn’t enough money to pay the full cost of fees, in other words, when they have to make up the difference.

As there was no financial assessment, no money was taken from her while she was alive. Instead, all of my mother’s government pension was being paid into a joint account. Now that she is dead, that money now belongs to her carer. The bill for the care home fees, of course, belongs to the estate i.e. me.

I also discovered that Social Services, who put Mum into a home without consulting me, have a perfect right to do this so if you have an aged parent, don’t think that when they get ill you can step in and look after them because you might find that you have no rights. Next of kin means nothing, zilch, sweet **. 

I now need to decide whether to ask Denis if he will pay anything towards the fees, or agree to pay for the funeral.

What annoys me is that if Mum had very little money, Social Services would have looked into every penny of her income and made sure that half of it was going towards the fees. As it is, she had funds, so why bother.