Question about spending mums money

The £23 a week figure refers to the amount of "personal expenditure" money that they are required to leave someone in residential care, if that person is local authority funded and their normal income is being taken by the local authority.

It does not apply to self-funders which I assume your mum is. I'm a bit puzzled as to why her fees have gone up simply because she has acquired a cash asset as an inheritance? Is this because previously she was partially funded by the local authority but her inheritance pushed he rover the threshold and she became fully self funding?

Anyway, someone who is self-funding can of course spend their money as they like. The only concern is that it would be regarded as a Deprivation of Asset (that is, deliberately giving away money or spending it in unusual ways so that it cannot be taken to pay for care fees, or leaves you under the threshold so that you qualify for local authority funding).

They key point is that "reasonable expenditure" is allowed. A good measure of this would be that the spending was simply following a pattern that had been established for some time and before the person was ill and could not "reasonably expect" to need residential care. Another good measure is that the expenditure is "reasonably proportionate to means" - so giving of gifts is fine, so long as means you aren't left short of money or are making heavy demands on savings to make up the loss of income.

Very similar rules apply to how Attorneys who hold POA should behave: ie, they are perfectly OK to keep on giving gifts etc just as the person whose affairs they are now looking after previously did, or would be "reasonably expected" to for a special occasion. And again, the "proportionate to means" is a good guideline as well.

As said, it would be a very good idea to keep a record of everything you spend and what it is spent on. This is much better than just showing the financial assessors some bank statements that just show withdrawals.

I think you're Ok so long as the expenditures are "reasonable" and simply keep up what your mum had herself been doing for a long time. But suddenly giving a lot more for birthdays or Christmas, giving to people who didn't receive before, buying unusual luxury items, that sort of thing, then you could well fall foul of the rules.