Trusts are sometimes used by people as a way of managing assets like money and property, and some people set them up in the hope that it will protect them from having to sell their home to pay for care fees.
However this can be seen by local authorities as hiding assets, known as deprivation of assets, external, and can therefore be challenged.
Mrs Gifford says she did not understand that when she signed up for the trust.
She says she and her late husband, Mike, took up McClure’s offer of a free will when his health was deteriorating with multiple sclerosis, and it was during a visit to their home by a firm representative that they were encouraged to take out the trust at a cost of £4,486.
“He said, looking at Mike, ‘Have you thought about what’s going to happen if you ever have to go into a home?’…
“‘You could put the home into a trust and therefore the council couldn’t take it and you’d have a home for your two children.'”
She says they were assured it would be a legal way to protect their home from local authority means testing and care fees.
But four years later, on a chance visit to the bank in 2022, she says she was told McClure had gone bust.
She says she later discovered her and her husband’s name had been removed from the deeds and replaced by Ww & J McClure Trust Corporation Limited.
Mrs Gifford says they were not informed that by creating a trust they would no longer be the legal owners but instead the beneficiaries.
“I felt sick, I didn’t know which way to go,” she says.
“I had so much stress and anxiety with this, it was terrible.
“I cried and cried… I still can’t sleep now.”