Live Webinar: Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Incapacity and the Surviving Spouse

It can be an extremely sad and devastating life event when an elderly person reaches the stage when they lose capacity and need to leave home to obtain the level of care they require. Many plan to cover the cost of entering into aged or high care from the sale of their family home. But what happens if their surviving spouse is not yet requiring that level of care and is able (and desires) to live independently? What if others are also residing in the family home? What if the family home has already been passed to adult children and the parties were residing in a grant flat out the back? Without proper planning, it can get complicated quite quickly. This session shall take a deeper dive into this and considers:

• The scenarios in which one party may need to cause the other to leave the family home, including loss of capacity, family violence, neglect and abuse of the carer by the spouse with dementia
• The liability issues which arise for the carer spouse and practical limitations of keeping the incapacitated spouse in the home, including tips for what questions to ask to ascertain if the carer spouse is being harmed and/or struggling and needing help
• The options available to finance this transition where equity is tied up in the family home
• The powers of the courts and tribunal to step in - what orders can they make, when will they intervene and how this has been dealt with by the courts in recent times