Perhaps more important than the two remaining problems is this thought: planning to protect your home from the burden of care fees is, in effect, planning to live in state-funded care for the rest of your life if you become ill. And the quality of that care is not necessarily very high. People of modest wealth may have no choice about this - but people of means should be thinking of ways to fund high-quality care, not planning to avoid it.
9. The Deprivation Rule. The rules which assess how much a person must pay for their care say that the local authority have to include among your assets any assets which you have given away with the intention of avoiding the social services charge.
10. Insolvency. Supposing you do go into social services care, and they assess you to pay more than you can actually afford to pay (i.e. because you have given your home away). Then you would in effect be bankrupt. And there is nothing to stop social services from actually bankrupting you. The advantage from their viewpoint is the ability to go back and set aside any gifts made in two years (or sometimes five years) before the bankruptcy, giving them a direct action against your children or the property itself.
A final thought is to consider what other assets you have. If your income or other capital exceed the local authority's contribution thresholds then you will have to pay for any care in full, anyway. A gift of your home in those circumstances might have exposed you to all the risks mentioned in my two previous postings, for no benefit whatsoever.
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