- Ziggurat Realestatecorp
- Nov 15
- 4 min read
UK Cost of living is making relatives impatient for their money.
Trillions of pounds are expected to be passed down through families over the next 30 years in a “great wealth transfer”.
However, as households are squeezed by rising prices, increasing numbers of older people are being pestered to hand over money by impatient “entitled” relatives. But this pressure to give up their assets can amount to financial abuse, campaigners warn. “This is not just a growing trend but an epidemic,” said Richard Robinson of Hourglass, a charity that campaigns against the abuse of older people.
This type of financial abuse is distinct from fraud or scams because it is not perpetrated by strangers, but a trusted person in the victim’s life. More than half of perpetrators are an adult child of the victim, according to research by Hourglass, and 81 per cent are a family member.
Older people are being manipulated to hand over cash to family members struggling with the cost of living.
“This is a massively underplayed issue in all walks of society, something we’ve been calling for urgent governmental action on for many years,” Robinson said. The charity supports 75,000 victims a year, up from about 4,000 in 2018.
Vicky Reynal, a money psychotherapist, said a common reason for “inheritance impatience” is a sense of entitlement to the victim’s estate. “The economic climate we live in is creating a lot of tension,” she said. “Handouts from parents are seen as increasingly necessary, and inheritance seems too far down the line to make much of a difference.”
Housing and tax pressures
Many families are seeking early access to inheritances to get on the property ladder. The average house price in the UK has more than tripled from £84,000 in 2000 to £293,000 today, according to the Office for National Statistics.
As a result, 57 per cent of renters believe that buying a home is impossible without family help, Barclays found. Rising tax pressures also drive demands for family handouts. The inheritance tax-free threshold will be frozen at £325,000 until at least 2030, and pension savings will be included in estates from April 2027.
This will mean many more estates facing a 40 per cent tax bill. And the seven-year rule, which exempts from inheritance tax gifts of money, provided the donor lives for seven years after making the gift, adds a sense of urgency. Now family members are pushing to receive sums sooner.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that almost all of the £17 billion gifted or lent by pensioners each year is given to their adult children. While most of this money is given freely and lovingly, some pensioners may be coerced into giving it away earlier than planned, often through emotional manipulation.
“We’re definitely seeing people with more of a sense of entitlement or ownership of their future inheritance, as opposed to anything they might receive as a boon or a gift,” said Stuart Downey from TWM Solicitors, based in the southeast. Reynal described how she has seen clients struggle to refuse their children’s demands for money.
Some children even use threats such as cutting them off from their grandchildren or no longer visiting if the money is withheld. Many victims fear they will be sent into a care home against their will. Downey said he has seen many clients’ families place their elderly relative in a far cheaper care home than they could afford, to save their inheritance.
This is known as “inheritance preservation”, where family members block pensioners from spending their money in the hope of taking it themselves.
Taking advantage
Callers to the Hourglass helpline have suffered financial losses of more than £53 million in the past three years. But in reality this figure is probably much higher, because only 14 per cent of callers disclosed the amount they had given away.
Robinson said that many older people were reluctant to report how much they had lost. They didn’t consider transferring money to family members as abuse and didn’t recognize that they may have been manipulated.
The attitudes of both victim and perpetrator are a big obstacle to the prevention of this type of abuse. In England 25 per cent of people do not believe that taking items from an older relative’s home without asking is a form of abuse, according to a survey of more than 2,000 people conducted by YouGov for Hourglass.
And 26 per cent of respondents did not believe that using power of attorney over an older relative for personal financial gain was abuse, nor that family members trying to change the wills of older relatives was a form of abuse.
At the same time, many victims do not want to see, or perhaps admit, that a family member may be taking advantage of them. “Most people don’t believe they’re being abused,” Robinson said. “They trust and love those people, who are their family and are there to look after them. They believe that if they call them out as abusers, they’ll lose that support.”
How can people protect themselves?
Reynal said families must learn to speak openly about finances and inheritance, and added that for those passing down an estate, “it’s important to be clear about why you’re doing what you’re doing”.
Family members should also try to empathise with their older relatives. “Step into the shoes of the parents to empathise with the impact of those demands being made,” she said. Older people can create a lasting power of attorney while they have mental capacity.
This gives someone the authority to manage their finances if they become unable to do so. It is recommended to seek professional guidance before making any decisions.
While there are some tools that can be used to help protect finances, such as bank account controls, Robinson said: “People are craving inheritance like there’s no tomorrow, and the safeguards are simply not there.”
Source: The Times