I talked in a previous blog post last week about gift splitting. That is, gifts from A, to B and C in quick succession.

This often arises when a parent gifts a site to a child. The child cannot then, place the asset into the joint names of him/her and their spouse. So if Seamus, a father gifts a site to his daughter Patricia who is married to John, the site cannot be placed into joint names for three years. It should be noted however, there is a specific Revenue exemption/concession in relation to this. This applies in relation to putting property into joint names where it is a requirement of the lending institution. If for reasons of borrowings a financial institution requires title to be in joint names, then, the gift splitting rules are waived. However, and this is vitally important, this only applies to married couples and not to cohabitees. So young or not so young unmarried couples are still caught by the three year rule and push back should be given to lending institutions who insist on a site being in joint names.