Every week, families put their most valuable asset at risk without realising it, simply because the right legal arrangement is not in place. If you and your partner own a home together, two scenarios could mean your share ends up with the wrong people: sideways disinheritance and care fees. Both are more common than most families realise, and both are largely preventable with a Property Protection Trust.
The two risks most homeowners don't know about
Sideways disinheritance
When a jointly owned home passes outright to the surviving partner, they then own it in full. If they remarry, rewrite their Will, or simply change their mind, the children from the first relationship may receive nothing. The inheritance does not disappear, it moves sideways, away from the intended beneficiaries. It is a particular risk in blended families, where good intentions carry no legal weight.
Care fees
Average UK care home fees in 2025 are around £1,406 a week for residential care and £1,558 for nursing, over £73,000 a year. Anyone with assets above £23,250 is a self-funder, and property is included in that assessment. The planned £100,000 threshold and £86,000 cap were scrapped in July 2024. Between 40,000 and 70,000 homes are sold each year to fund care.
What is a Property Protection Trust?
Also called a Life Interest Trust, it is written into your Will and changes what happens to your share of the home when you die. First you change ownership from Joint Tenants to Tenants in Common, so each partner owns a defined share. Your Will then places your share into a trust on your death, rather than passing it outright to your partner. Your surviving partner keeps the full right to live in the home for life, nothing changes for them day to day, but when they die (or leave), your protected share passes to your chosen beneficiaries.
What a PPT protects against, in plain terms
- Sideways disinheritance: your share cannot be redirected by remarriage, a new Will or a new relationship.
- Care fees (partial): if your surviving partner later needs care, only their share is means-tested; your ring-fenced share is protected. In a jointly owned home, that can shield half the value.
- Future uncertainty: because your share is in trust, not your partner's personal estate, it is protected from their future bankruptcy or creditor claims.
- What it cannot do: it is not a way to avoid care fees that are already foreseeable. It must be set up for legitimate estate planning, well before any care need, or a local authority can challenge it as deliberate deprivation. It protects only the deceased partner's share, not the survivor's.
Who needs one?
Consider it seriously if you own a home jointly and have children, are in a second marriage or blended family (where it is most urgently needed), are concerned about care fees, are an unmarried couple who own a share of a property, or simply want legally binding certainty rather than relying on goodwill.
A real-life illustration
Margaret and David own a North Somerset home worth £350,000, each with children from previous marriages. Without a PPT: David dies, his share passes to Margaret, she later remarries and updates her Will, and on her death everything passes to her new husband, David's children receive nothing. With a PPT: David's share goes into trust, Margaret lives in the home for life, but when she dies David's share passes to his children exactly as intended, and if Margaret later needs care, only her share is assessed.
How it is set up
We handle every step: changing ownership to Tenants in Common at the Land Registry (no mortgage lender consent needed in most cases), drafting your Will to include the trust with your partner as life tenant and your chosen beneficiaries as the remainder, reviewing and signing everything at home in plain English, then storing it safely.
The right time to act is now
A PPT must be set up while both partners are alive and well, once a partner has died it is too late for their share. And for care-fee protection to be meaningful, it must be established well before any foreseeable care need, not reactively once a diagnosis has been made.
We help families across North Somerset, Bristol and Bath put Property Protection Trusts in place, clearly and professionally, in the comfort of their own home, before life makes the decision for you.