How to Avoid Paying Care Home Fees: 4 Legal Routes (2026)

The only legal way to avoid care home fees entirely is NHS Continuing Healthcare — 100% of costs covered, no means test. Property trusts and tenants-in-common arrangements delay the means test but don't eliminate fees. CHC can be retrospectively claimed, going back six years.

TL;DR: The only legal route to avoid care home fees entirely is NHS Continuing Healthcare — the NHS pays 100% of costs with no means test. Around 60,000 people in England receive it (NHS England, 2023–24), yet the majority who qualify are never assessed. Property trusts and tenants in common restructure what the council can see in the means test; they do not eliminate fees.

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What are the legal ways to avoid care home fees?

There are four routes families explore. Only one removes fees completely. The others reduce or delay what you pay — but the fees themselves remain. Understanding the difference matters, because families spend years and legal fees pursuing arrangements that can't deliver what they're promised. In practice, local authorities often steer families toward partial solutions without mentioning that full NHS funding may apply.

1. NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC)

CHC is an NHS-funded package of care for adults whose needs are primarily health-driven. There is no means test. There is no asset threshold. If your relative qualifies, the NHS pays 100% of their care home fees. This is the only route that removes care home fees entirely.

2. Local authority funding

If your relative's assets fall below £23,250 (England, 2024-25), the local authority contributes to care costs. However, your relative pays an assessed contribution based on income and assets. This reduces what you pay — it does not eliminate fees. The means test still applies to the individual's assets.

3. Tenants in common

Splitting a property into separate shares can protect a surviving spouse's 50% from the local authority means test when they need care in future. It does not protect the individual's own share. Their 50% is still counted. This arrangement delays the means test for one person, not both.

4. Property trusts

A property trust can, in some circumstances, protect assets for inheritance purposes. Councils challenge recent transfers actively. If avoidance of care fees was a significant motivation behind the transfer, the council can treat those assets as still belonging to your relative — however the legal title reads.

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Does NHS Continuing Healthcare remove care home fees entirely?

Yes. NHS Continuing Healthcare is the one route that eliminates care home fees completely. The National Framework for NHS Continuing Healthcare (2022) governs eligibility. Funding is based solely on health need — there is no means test, no savings threshold, no property assessment. If your relative qualifies, the NHS pays everything.

If your relative has complex health needs, the NHS may already be legally required to fund their care. Therefore, the question is not whether you can afford the fees — it's whether the right assessment has been done. Many families pay for years without knowing an NHS-funded route existed. This is especially common with dementia care home fees, where the condition driving the cost is often the same one that qualifies for CHC.

CHC uses a 12-domain assessment framework called the Decision Support Tool. The 12 domains cover behaviour, cognition, communication, psychological needs, mobility, nutrition, continence, skin integrity, breathing, medication, altered states of consciousness, and other significant care needs. The test is whether your relative has a "primary health need" — meaning their care needs, taken as a whole, are primarily driven by health rather than social care.

A successful CHC award covers care home fees, personal care, and nursing care in full. The family pays nothing. According to NHS England, around 60,000 people in England receive CHC funding at any one time — but research by Independent Age (2023) suggests many more people who meet the criteria are never assessed or are incorrectly refused. The assessment process has two formal stages: a checklist screening, and a full multidisciplinary team assessment. Families can request a checklist. They do not have to wait to be referred.

In our experience supporting families through CHC assessments, the families who request the checklist themselves — rather than waiting for the hospital or local authority to initiate it — consistently achieve better outcomes. The system does not proactively offer this route. You have to ask for it.

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Tenants in Common and Property Trusts

Tenants in common arrangements are sometimes promoted as a way to avoid care home fees. The honest position is more limited. Splitting a property into separate shares can protect a surviving spouse's 50% from being counted in their own future means test. That is a legitimate and lawful purpose. But it does not protect the individual's own share from their means test.

When the first person needs care, their 50% is still an asset the council counts. When the second person later needs care, their 50% — having been protected by the tenants in common arrangement — is not counted. As a result, the arrangement benefits the second person to need care, not both. Families are not always told this clearly.

Property trusts carry similar limitations. A trust can hold assets outside the estate for inheritance planning. But councils are alert to recent transfers and will investigate timing carefully. If care was foreseeable — or if the transfer happened shortly before a care needs assessment — the council has grounds to challenge it under the deliberate deprivation rules.

Neither arrangement is unlawful when done properly and for genuine reasons. Nevertheless, neither reliably avoids care home fees for the person whose health needs have created the care requirement.

Families often spend £1,500–£3,000 in solicitor fees setting up these arrangements, expecting comprehensive protection. The protection they actually get is narrower and more contingent than the sales process implies. CHC — which is free to pursue — delivers more complete protection for the right candidates. Age UK offers free guidance on all care funding routes.

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Deliberate Deprivation of Assets

Section 73 of the Care Act 2014 gives councils the power to treat transferred assets as still belonging to your relative when calculating their care contribution. The test is whether avoiding care fees was "a significant motivation" behind the transfer. It does not have to be the only motivation. Significant motivation is enough.

Notably, there is no minimum timeframe in the statute. A transfer made two months before a care needs assessment is acutely vulnerable. A transfer made ten years before care was ever anticipated — when no care need was foreseeable — is in a very different position. The law does not automatically capture long-term financial planning. It targets transfers where care costs were a foreseeable factor.

The council does not need to prove intent beyond reasonable doubt. They apply a civil standard of assessment. If the evidence suggests avoidance was part of the picture, they can proceed. This is why recent, significant transfers of property or savings made as care needs were developing carry serious risk.

Families frequently discover this rule only after a transfer has already been challenged. We've helped families recover overpayments by pursuing retrospective CHC claims after a deprivation challenge made their original planning irrelevant. The asset has been transferred, the solicitor has been paid, and the council is now assessing as if the transfer never happened. The time to understand this rule is before any transfer, not after.

What deliberate deprivation does not capture is general financial planning — lifetime gifting to children, trust arrangements made years before care was needed, or property that was sold for entirely unrelated reasons long before any health decline. Context and timing matter.

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Can care home fees be claimed back retrospectively?

Yes. If your relative was self-funding in a period when they should have qualified for NHS Continuing Healthcare, you can apply for a retrospective review. The NHS operates a six-year look-back window for retrospective CHC claims. Fees already paid in that window may be refunded — sometimes to the value of tens of thousands of pounds.

A retrospective review looks at the clinical records from the period in question. Specifically, assessors work from GP notes, hospital records, care home care plans, and medication records to establish what your relative's needs were at the time. If those needs met the CHC criteria — even though no CHC assessment was ever done — the NHS should refund the fees that were paid.

This matters particularly for families whose relative entered a care home directly from hospital without a CHC checklist being completed first. That failure to assess is common. It is also challengeable. The retrospective CHC claims process has formal stages but it is accessible to families without legal representation.

The process takes time — typically six to eighteen months for a full retrospective review. But the financial stakes are high. Care home fees at £1,000 per week over two years represent over £100,000. Even a partial refund for a period where CHC should have applied is a significant sum.

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