After decades of sharing a home, a bed, morning routines, and a life together, the thought of being separated in aged care is — for most couples — one of the most distressing things they can imagine. It is the question that keeps families up at night: can we stay together in aged care? The good news — and it is genuinely good news — is that in most cases, yes, you can. But how well it works, and how smoothly the transition goes, depends enormously on how well prepared you are.

Aged care for couples in Australia has evolved significantly in recent years. The sector now offers more accommodation options, more flexible care models, and — under the new Aged Care Act 2024 — stronger rights for residents and their partners than at any point in the system’s history. Whether both of you have similar care needs or very different ones, whether you want to share a room or simply share the same facility, there are pathways that can keep you close and keep your daily life feeling as familiar and comfortable as possible.

This guide covers everything Australian couples and their families need to know about aged care in 2025: the accommodation options available, how couple room types work, what happens when one partner has more complex care needs, how fees work for couples, and — most importantly — how to protect the routines, rituals, and companionship that make a long partnership what it is.

Why Staying Together in Aged Care Matters

It might seem obvious — of course couples want to stay together. But the evidence behind why it matters goes well beyond sentiment. Research consistently shows that older adults who maintain close proximity to their long-term partners in residential settings experience measurably better outcomes across multiple domains.

Studies show that couples who remain together in aged care tend to have lower stress levels, a stronger sense of purpose, better adherence to care recommendations, and reduced incidence of depression and anxiety. The emotional support that a long-term partner provides — the simple comfort of a familiar face, a shared joke, a hand to hold — is something no amount of professional care can fully replicate. For residents living with dementia in particular, the presence of a familiar partner can meaningfully reduce agitation, confusion, and the distress that often accompanies relocation to an unfamiliar environment.

There is also the practical reality of daily life. Shared routines — morning tea together, watching the same television programmes, attending the same activities — provide continuity and comfort in an environment where so much else has changed. For couples who have spent fifty or sixty years building those routines together, having them stripped away at the point of greatest vulnerability is genuinely harmful. A good aged care provider for couples understands this and actively works to protect and preserve those routines, not just the clinical dimensions of care.

 

The Aged Care for Couples Landscape in Australia: What the Numbers Tell Us

Understanding the scale of need for aged care for couples in Australia starts with understanding how rapidly and profoundly the country’s population is ageing. As of 2023, over 4.4 million Australians — 17% of the population — were aged 65 and over. By 2050, projections suggest that nearly 1 in 4 Australians will be in the over-65 age group. That is a demographic transformation of enormous scale, and it is already reshaping every dimension of the aged care sector.

At 30 June 2024, 198,000 people were living in permanent or respite residential aged care in Australia, with a further 275,000 receiving support through home care packages and around 835,000 accessing home support services. The average age at admission to permanent residential aged care is 85 years for women and 83 years for men — ages at which many Australians have been married or partnered for five, six, or even seven decades.

Within that population, a significant and growing proportion are couples — either entering the system at the same time, or in situations where one partner enters residential care while the other remains at home or in a retirement living setting. The needs of couples in aged care have historically been an underprioritised area of the system, but this is changing. Both the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and the new Aged Care Act 2024 have contributed to a heightened recognition that relationships, companionship, and emotional wellbeing are as much a part of quality care as clinical outcomes.

Sources: ABS 2023; AIHW Aged Care Data 2024; Productivity Commission 2023.

Aged Care for Couples: Your Accommodation Options Explained

One of the most common misconceptions about aged care for couples in Australia is that entering residential care automatically means being separated. It does not. Most reputable aged care providers now offer a range of accommodation configurations specifically designed to keep couples together — or at least in close proximity. The options available to you depend on the facility, the availability of suitable rooms, and the individual care needs of each partner.

Here is a clear breakdown of the main aged care room types for couples currently available in Australia.

Shared Couple Rooms (Companion Rooms)

A shared couple room — sometimes called a companion room or couple’s suite — is the most straightforward option for partners who want to remain together. In a shared couple room, both partners occupy the same room, typically with two single beds (which can often be pushed together), a shared ensuite bathroom, individual wardrobes, and a sitting area.

These rooms are generally the largest single rooms in any facility — in some providers, companion rooms average around 29 square metres — and are designed to feel genuinely liveable as a shared space. Facilities with newer builds often include features like individual climate controls, wall-mounted televisions, and views of landscaped gardens or courtyards.

The shared couple room suits partners who want to maintain the same sleeping and daily living arrangements they had at home. It is particularly beneficial for couples where one partner provides informal emotional support to the other, or where both partners feel most settled and secure in each other’s physical presence. For couples where one or both partners have dementia, the shared environment can significantly reduce disorientation and distress in the early transition period.

 

Adjoining or Interconnecting Rooms

Adjoining rooms — two private rooms connected by a shared internal door — are an increasingly popular option for couples in aged care who want a degree of privacy and independence while still living in immediate proximity. With interconnecting rooms, each partner has their own personal space, their own ensuite, and their own private environment — but the door between them means they are never truly separate.

This configuration suits couples where sleep patterns are different (one partner may be a light sleeper; the other may need overnight care that would disturb them), where one partner needs specialist care equipment that takes up significant room space, or where both partners value having a degree of personal space whilst still being together for daily activities, meals, and shared time.

Some newer facilities offer interconnecting rooms that can be configured flexibly — one room used as a combined bedroom, the other as a private living room — effectively creating a small, self-contained apartment within the larger facility. This option is particularly suited to couples who enter aged care at a relatively early stage and want their daily living environment to feel as close to home as possible.

Adjacent Rooms on the Same Wing or Floor

Where dedicated couple rooms or interconnecting rooms are not available, many facilities can accommodate couples in adjacent or nearby private rooms on the same wing or floor. Each partner has their own fully private room and ensuite, but the rooms are close enough that daily contact — morning coffee together, meals at the same table, attending the same activities — is easy and natural.

For some couples, this is actually the preferred arrangement. After many years of sharing every aspect of daily life, the transition to aged care can represent an opportunity to establish a degree of personal space that was never really possible at home. Some couples find that adjacent but separate rooms allow both partners to sleep better, to maintain individual friendships and interests within the facility, and to enjoy the time they do spend together more fully.

Co-Located Retirement and Aged Care Living

A growing number of providers now offer co-located living arrangements — where one partner lives in residential aged care and the other lives in an adjoining retirement village or independent living community. This model is designed specifically for couples where one partner has care needs requiring residential support, while the other remains active and relatively independent.

In a co-located arrangement, the partner in retirement living can visit the partner in residential care freely — walking across a shared courtyard or garden, sharing meals in the dining room, attending activities together — while each receives the level of support appropriate to their individual needs. This model preserves the emotional connection of the couple while ensuring that neither partner is receiving too much or too little care for their actual circumstances.

When Partners Have Different Care Needs

One of the most complex — and most common — situations for couples seeking aged care is when the two partners have significantly different care needs. Perhaps one partner has moderate dementia requiring a secure memory support environment, while the other is physically and cognitively healthy. Perhaps one partner has had a stroke requiring intensive physiotherapy and nursing care, while the other remains active and independent. Perhaps one partner’s clinical needs are escalating rapidly, while the other’s are stable.

In these situations, the question of aged care for couples with different needs requires careful, individual assessment and honest, open conversation with potential providers. Here is what you need to know.

Individual ACAT Assessments Are Always Required

In Australia, admission to residential aged care requires a formal assessment by the Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT) — known as ACAS in Victoria. Critically, each partner must be assessed individually, based on their own specific care needs. You cannot use one assessment for both partners, even if you are entering care together.

The individual assessment determines what level of care each partner is approved for, which in turn affects which rooms and care arrangements are available to them within the facility. Two partners entering the same facility may receive quite different care plans, different staffing allocations, and different allied health services — even if they share a room.

Separate Care Plans, Together in the Same Home

A quality aged care provider for couples will develop fully individualised care plans for each partner while actively coordinating those plans to support the couple’s shared daily life. This means the clinical care each person receives is tailored to their specific needs and reviewed regularly — but mealtimes, activities, social time, and daily routines are structured around the couple’s preferences together.

For example, one partner may receive daily physiotherapy and wound care, whilst the other attends art therapy and the weekly garden club. But both attend breakfast together, sit in the same section of the dining room, and take their afternoon walk — or wheelchair ride — side by side. Achieving this level of coordination requires a provider that genuinely values the couple as a unit, not just as two individual residents who happen to share a surname.

What Happens When One Partner Needs Dementia-Specific Care?

Dementia affects more than half of all people in permanent residential aged care in Australia — it is the single most common reason for entering residential care. When one partner has dementia requiring care in a secure memory support unit, the question of staying together becomes more nuanced.

Some facilities have dementia-specific wings or units within the same building, meaning a partner without dementia can have a room in the general area while still being able to visit and spend time with their partner in the secure unit throughout the day. Others offer dedicated dementia care homes where both partners can live, even if one does not have dementia — in which case the partner without dementia can move freely throughout the facility while the partner with dementia receives the additional security and specialised support they need.

This is a conversation to have directly with any facility you are considering. Ask specifically: if my partner’s dementia progresses to the point where they need to move to a secure unit, can I continue to live in the same facility and visit freely? The answer to that question will tell you a great deal about how seriously the provider takes the needs of couples in aged care.

How Fees Work for Couples in Aged Care

Understanding the financial arrangements for couples entering aged care together is important — and the good news is that, in most respects, the system treats each partner as an individual rather than penalising couples for being together.

Fees Are Assessed Individually

Each partner’s aged care fees are assessed separately by Services Australia, based on each person’s individual income and assets. This means that even if you are in the same room, you each receive your own income and assets assessment, your own means-tested care fee calculation, and you each receive your own Age Pension (at the single pension rate, not a shared couple rate) for the purposes of the aged care fee calculation.

This is an important and frequently misunderstood point: being assessed for aged care fees does not mean sharing a single pension between two people. Each partner is assessed as an individual, which generally means the overall fee burden is more manageable than many couples fear when they first start investigating costs.

The Basic Daily Fee

The Basic Daily Fee is charged to every residential aged care resident in Australia, regardless of income or assets. In 2025, this is approximately $63.57 per day per person — set by the Australian Government at 85% of the single Age Pension. If both partners are in residential care together, you will each pay this fee separately.

Refundable Accommodation Deposit (RAD) for Couple Rooms

For couples sharing a room, the Refundable Accommodation Deposit (RAD) is typically set for the room as a whole — not doubled for two people. The RAD amount for a couple’s shared room reflects the fact that it is a single (larger) room, and a single RAD applies to that accommodation. When one partner leaves or passes away, the question of how the RAD is managed is an important one to discuss with the facility before admission.

If both partners are in separate rooms — even in the same facility — each will pay their own RAD for their individual room. As of 1 July 2025, the maximum permissible interest rate for Daily Accommodation Payments (DAPs) is 7.78% per annum.

Means-Tested Care Fee

The Means-Tested Care Fee (MTCF) is calculated on each partner’s individual income and assets as assessed by Services Australia. Annual and lifetime caps apply: the annual cap in 2025 is $32,719.07 and the lifetime cap is $78,524.87 — meaning neither partner will pay more than these amounts in care fees regardless of their financial position.

 

Keeping Routines Together: The Heart of Aged Care for Couples

The accommodation arrangement and the fee structure are important — but for most couples, the question that matters most is simpler and more fundamental: will we still feel like a couple? Will we still have our morning tea ritual? Will we still be able to watch the cricket together on Saturday afternoon? Will we still hold hands at the dinner table?

A good aged care home for couples is one that actively works to protect and honour those shared routines — not because they are administratively convenient, but because they understand that those routines are not trivial habits. They are the texture of a long partnership. They are the evidence of a life shared. And preserving them — even partially, even imperfectly — has a measurable positive impact on the health and wellbeing of both partners.

Shared Mealtimes

Meals are often the most important daily shared ritual for older couples. Ask any facility you are considering whether couples can always sit together at mealtimes — not occasionally, but as a guaranteed, consistent arrangement. Ask whether the dining environment is calm and social, and whether there is flexibility around meal times to accommodate couples who prefer to eat at slightly different hours to the main sitting.

The best facilities actively plan seating so that couples who eat together are always placed together — not left to navigate the dining room independently each day in the hope of finding adjacent seats. This level of thoughtfulness is a reliable marker of a provider that genuinely treats aged care for couples as a priority, not an afterthought.

Joint Activities and Social Programmes

An enriching lifestyle and activities programme is one of the most important things to look for in any aged care home — and for couples, the question is whether activities can be enjoyed together. Ask whether activities are designed with couples in mind, whether there is an activities programme that can accommodate partners with different mobility or cognitive levels, and whether couples are actively encouraged to attend shared activities.

Great aged care homes celebrate couple milestones — wedding anniversaries, significant birthdays, relationship milestones — as meaningful community occasions. A facility that acknowledges your 55th wedding anniversary with a small celebration, a special meal, and a moment of recognition is doing something clinically and emotionally significant, not just providing a nice gesture.

Morning and Evening Routines

The morning routine — the first cup of tea, the newspaper, the quiet conversation before the day begins — is one of the most intimate and cherished parts of many long partnerships. Ask facilities how flexible they are around morning routines for couples. Can you have breakfast in your room together on days when you prefer not to go to the dining room? Can your morning care be timed so that both partners are ready at roughly the same time, so the morning doesn’t feel disjointed?

These are not trivial requests. They are the kinds of considerations that determine whether a move into aged care feels like a loss of self, or an adaptation that allows a couple to continue living — together, with support — on their own terms.

Privacy and Intimacy

One aspect of aged care for couples that is rarely discussed but profoundly important is the right to privacy and physical intimacy. Under the new Aged Care Act 2024, residents have explicit rights to privacy and to maintain intimate relationships. A quality provider will have clear, respectful policies that support couples in maintaining their relationship — including physical intimacy — in a dignified and private environment.

If this matters to you, ask about it directly during your facility tour. The comfort and openness with which a facility discusses this topic tells you a great deal about its culture of respect and its genuine commitment to treating residents as whole human beings with complex, ongoing needs for connection and love.

Home Care as an Alternative: Staying Together at Home

For many couples, the idea of entering residential aged care feels premature — or simply not right for where they are in life. It is worth noting that residential aged care is not the only option for couples who need support. Home care for couples in Australia has expanded significantly in recent years, and under the new Support at Home program (which replaced Home Care Packages from 1 November 2025), couples living at home now have access to more flexible, individually tailored support than ever before.

About 7 in 10 older Australians say they would prefer to receive care in their own home as they age. For couples in particular, remaining at home — in the environment they have shared and built together — has obvious emotional appeal. Home care services can include personal care, nursing, medication management, domestic assistance, meal preparation, transport, social support, and allied health services such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy.

Each partner can receive their own individually assessed and funded package of services, calibrated to their specific needs. One partner may need daily nursing visits; the other may only need help with household tasks once a week. Both can receive appropriate support while continuing to share their home and their daily life together.

The key question for couples considering home care is whether the level of support available through the home care system is genuinely sufficient for both partners’ needs — and whether the caring load being carried by the healthier partner is sustainable. Many couples find that one partner inadvertently becomes a full-time informal carer for the other, which creates its own significant health and wellbeing risks. Home care should support the couple’s shared life, not quietly transfer the burden of care from the formal system to the informal carer.

When Is It Time to Consider Residential Aged Care for Couples?

There is no single moment when residential aged care becomes the right choice — it is a gradual, personal, and deeply individual decision. But there are some consistent signals that suggest the time may be approaching:

• One or both partners’ care needs are escalating beyond what home care can safely and adequately provide
• The healthier partner is showing signs of carer burnout — exhaustion, health decline, social isolation, or emotional distress
• Safety concerns at home are increasing — falls, medication errors, wandering (in the case of dementia), or inadequate overnight supervision
• The person being cared for is expressing loneliness or a desire for more social connection and community
• Hospital admissions are occurring with increasing frequency, suggesting that clinical care needs are exceeding what the home environment can support

When these signs emerge, the conversation about residential aged care for couples is not about giving up — it is about finding a solution that protects both partners’ health, wellbeing, and relationship for the long term.

What to Ask When Touring Aged Care Facilities as a Couple

When you visit residential aged care facilities as a couple, it is important to go beyond the general tour questions and ask specifically about how the facility supports couples. Here are the most important questions to ask:

 

Aged Care for Couples and the New Aged Care Act 2024

The Aged Care Act 2024, which came into full effect on 1 November 2025, introduced a number of significant changes that are directly relevant to couples in aged care. These include:

A Statement of Rights that gives every resident explicit, legally enforceable rights — including the right to maintain relationships, the right to privacy, the right to be treated with dignity, and the right to have family and partners involved in care decisions. These rights apply regardless of cognitive capacity, and they cannot be waived or overridden by a facility’s internal policies.

Strengthened Quality Standards — particularly Standard 7, The Residential Community — that formally require providers to support residents’ belonging, relationships, and community connection. For couples, this means providers are now formally assessed on whether they are actively supporting residents in maintaining their most important relationships — including with their partner.

The right to visitors at all times — meaning a partner who lives separately (in retirement living, or at home) now has an explicit legal right to visit their partner in residential care without restriction, unless there is a specific clinical or safety reason that justifies a limitation.

These changes represent a genuine and meaningful shift in how Australian law treats the relationships and emotional needs of older Australians in residential care. If you feel a facility is not honouring these rights, you have the right to raise a formal complaint — with the facility directly, with the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission on 1800 951 822, or through the National Aged Care Advocacy Program (NACAP) on 1800 700 600.

Frequently Asked Questions: Aged Care for Couples in Australia

Can couples live together in residential aged care in Australia?

Yes. Most Australian residential aged care providers offer shared couple rooms, adjoining rooms, or the option for both partners to live in the same facility. The specific options depend on the facility’s room types and availability. Always ask about couple accommodation options early in the process, as demand for these rooms can be high.

What if my partner and I have different care needs?

Different care needs don’t have to mean separation. Each partner receives an individual ACAT assessment and a tailored care plan, but both can still live in the same facility — and often in the same room. The care team coordinates individual care plans around the couple’s shared routines. Where one partner needs specialist dementia care, ask the facility specifically how they support couples in this situation.

Do couples share a single pension in aged care fee calculations?

No. Each partner is assessed individually by Services Australia. For the purposes of aged care fee calculations, each partner’s income and assets are assessed separately, and each receives their own pension assessment. You will not be required to share a single pension between two people.

What happens to the RAD if one partner passes away?

If you have paid a single RAD for a shared couple room and one partner passes away, the remaining partner typically has the right to continue occupying the room. The specific arrangements around the RAD in this circumstance vary by provider and should be discussed and clarified in the residential care agreement before admission. Always seek independent financial advice before signing.

Can a couple enter residential aged care at the same time even if only one of them needs full-time care?

Yes. Many couples choose to enter residential care together, even if one partner has fewer care needs, to avoid the distress of separation. The partner with lower care needs will still require an ACAT assessment and will receive a care plan and services appropriate to their individual level of need. The co-located retirement and aged care living model is another option — where one partner lives in residential care and the other in nearby retirement living.

Conclusion: Aged Care for Couples Doesn’t Mean the End of Togetherness

The fear that aged care means separation — that a lifetime of partnership will be divided by a system that sees two individuals rather than a couple — is one of the most pervasive and painful anxieties that families carry into the aged care conversation. It is understandable. It comes from a real and deeply human place. But in Australia in 2025, it does not have to be true.

Aged care for couples has evolved enormously. The accommodation options — shared couple rooms, adjoining rooms, co-located living arrangements — provide genuine, practical pathways for partners to remain together. The financial system treats each partner as an individual, meaning costs are more manageable than many families fear. The new Aged Care Act 2024 gives couples legally enforceable rights around relationships, privacy, and visitation that did not exist in the same form under the previous legislation. And an increasing number of providers now actively design their facilities, their programmes, and their care models around the reality that many of their residents are part of couples — with shared histories, shared routines, and shared needs that go far beyond what any individual care plan can capture.

The key to a good outcome for couples entering aged care is the same as the key to any good aged care decision: preparation, informed questioning, and choosing a provider that genuinely understands what matters most to you. Visit facilities together. Ask the hard questions. Ask how they support couples. Ask how they protect shared routines. Ask what happens if one partner’s needs change. And trust what you observe — the warmth of the staff, the dignity of the residents, the feeling of the place as a home rather than an institution.

Togetherness in aged care is not just possible. With the right provider, it can be actively, genuinely, and beautifully supported.

If you are searching for aged care for couples in Queensland — in Redland City or on the Gold Coast — Superior Care Group is one of Queensland’s leading aged care providers, with renowned residences that have been serving Queensland families for over four decades.

Superior Care Group is family owned and operated — values that are reflected in everything they do, from the warmth of the welcome when you first walk through the door, to the way care is delivered every single day. They acquired their first aged care home, Wellington Park Private Care, in 1979, and in 2011 they opened their second residence, Merrimac Park Private Care on the Gold Coast. Their management team brings decades of hands-on aged care experience and a genuine, personal commitment to the wellbeing of every resident in their care.

What makes Superior Care Group an exceptional choice for couples is the depth of their understanding that aged care is not just a clinical service. It is a home. And for couples entering that home together, it is the continuation of a shared life — one that deserves to be honoured, protected, and actively supported at every turn. Their compassionate team develops personalised, tailored care plans for each resident, built around individual needs, preferences, and daily routines — and for couples, those plans are coordinated around the shared life that brought you both there in the first place.

Superior Care Group offers a wide variety of aged care services designed to help residents — including couples — live comfortably, independently, and with dignity. Whether you are planning ahead, navigating an urgent transition, or simply exploring your options, their experienced team is ready to guide you through every step with honesty, compassion, and genuine expertise.