Losing your home when a parent dies

[Orwell20]

Is anyone else in this situation? I mean, where you live with an ageing parent, on whom you depend for somewhere to live. What will happen when they die? Will you have to leave? Will you be homeless?

[humphrey]

I lived with my ageing mam untill she died a few years ago. I worried about this a lot. In the end my mum split her house equally between my brother, sister and me. My brother lives in the house with me but my sister is married, with her own house. We pay her so much a week so that we can continue living in the house. If we ever sell the house it has to be by unanimous agreement, we set that up with the land registry, when we reregistered the house jointly in our 3 names.

That was 3.5 years ago and it still seems to going ok at the moment.

If your house is rented you could probably transfer the tenancy into to your name. Becomes complicated if they own the house and need to go into care.

[Dougella]

^ In your situation I think you would qualify for your own social housing tenancy, so you could be allocated your own place. Even a bungalow if that was available!
But if you'd prefer a caravan i'm sure that would be ok too

[Moksha]

Originally Posted by DiamonD

^ I'd live in a Wendy House as long as it was far, FAR away from human beings.

I’m also in this situation. The house is in my mother’s name. If she has to go into a nursing home, the house will have to sold pay for it. I’ve often thought I could cope with anything so long as I have peace and space. But to have peace and quiet and space you need to be rich. Most people are squashed into housing estates, with people right on top of them. I dread ending up somewhere with a noisy or intrusive neighbour. It would drive me to a breakdown - or suicide.

[Dougella]

^ As I said in another thread there are quieter place quieter streets. Not everyone lives on packed housing estates. Although living totally in the middle of nowhere is probably a bit more tricky.

[newbs16]

^^^^^^ Does your sister contribute to maintaining the house?

After all its an investment and she will get money when it's sold.

[newbs16]

Does it depend on if the house is a council, or owned. If it's council my understanding is that you would have to move out but they would have to find you a property to live in, as otherwise they will be making you homeless.

I think it's more complicated when owned as depends who it is shared between and if the others want their share.

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[Tonkin]

Maybe get on the council waiting list now, just in case? I know you'll probably be waiting 10+ years but it's probably better than nothing.

Originally Posted by humphrey

If your house is rented you could probably transfer the tenancy into to your name. Becomes complicated if they own the house and need to go into care.

I think you'd have to prove you could pay the rent (earn 30x the monthly rent each year) and pass the credit checks.

[Dougella]

^ It is a good idea to get on the council list. It can be a long time but it depends where you live and where you're willing to live. Also someone with diagnosed severe mental health issues will obviously be viewed as a more urgent case.

[gregarious_introvert]

Most councils these days don't have waiting lists as such, it's changed to a "bid system" whereby your level of need is assessed and then, as soon as you are registered, you are able to bid for properties online. Each property has a different priority rating (eg. some favour elderly people, others vulnerable people, others families etc.) and your chance of a successful bid depends on whether that property matches your level of priority and who else has bid for it.

[Dougella]

^ That's true, I seem to remember a poster here being able to be allocated a council flat quicky because they were the only person on the list who bid on it.

[gregarious_introvert]

^ Getting my council bungalow was pretty quick, although I didn't want a bungalow; however, because I was 55 and vulnerable, they were the properties for which I had the best match and the first-floor flats were prioritised for "problem" tenants (I was advised not to bid on them because they were in "rough" areas, but this is Derbyshire and I'm from Peckham!).

Answering the question, no it's not a situation I've had to consider: I was living independently for more than thirty years before my father died (my mother died ten years earlier, at which point I became my father's carer). There was one brief period when I returned to the parental home, about a month after my mother's death whilst I looked for somewhere to live close to my father (my parents were living 250 miles from where I'd been living until then) but if we had had to live in the same house any longer than that, one of us would have killed the other! The relatively-short period of homelessness which I experienced a year later was not related to that, but to a relationship ending.

[choirgirl]

I'm brute forcing a flat purchase aka buying outright and then I hope I can remain sufficiently employed to afford to run it. Well, I was. I've dropped the ball some years ago after hitting my midlife crisis. I've still got some way to go. I wish I'd come up with the plan five years before I did, mad though it seems. I just always assumed I would get a better job 'some day'.

I came up with plan when I was freaking out about the return of the sturdy beggar in government policy, and wanting to avoid destitution and homelessness, which felt like some inevitable fate for someone like me unless I did something drastic. I also desperately wanted to live on my own like I'd always imagined and had reached my mid 30s where I had finally woken up and become impatient. Had it not been for that I probably would have just given up and rented as soon as I could and lived hand to mouth but that no longer seemed wise. I freaked out big time. The house is on fire, the 1930s are back! (Sadly minus the council house building). Baffling to me that others were still living in 2010. I did consider moving abroad, but didn't think I'd make a go of it, thought I might get lonely, and was worried about the (at the time) remote possibility of Brexit. The thought of having to live in a house share for ever AND not having a safety net was (and is) unacceptable to me. I considered living in a van, but realistically, this was not acceptable to me either, and to this day, I have yet to even drive a van. Although I sort of wish I had gone for this plan instead. I was pulled in a lot of different directions but I thought the most likely scenario if I didn't take drastic action was me struggling with nowhere to belong, like a lost ghost, with the wolves of penury ever snapping at my heels. Living with a sense of failure is one thing, living with the reality of long term poverty and insecurity is quite another.