Confused about joint tenancy

gorgeousme

I’m really confused. I own my home with my spouse via a joint tenancy agreement, so my half of the home will automatically go to my spouse on my death. Will that half be in my estate or not when it comes to the iht form?

Marcon

gorgeousme said:

I’m really confused. I own my home with my spouse via a joint tenancy agreement, so my half of the home will automatically go to my spouse on my death. Will that half be in my estate or not when it comes to the iht form?

If you are joint tenants, your half of the property does indeed go to your spouse automatically. There is no IHT payable when you leave property to a spouse, so your nil rate IHT band (currently £325K) isn't impacted by anything you leave to him.

This may make helpful reading: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/wills-and-probate/content/103797

getmore4less

The distributable estate and the taxable estate can be different.

Joint tenancy takes the share of the property out of the distributable estate as it passes by survivorship.

1/2 the house is included as an asset of the taxable Estate

Then it also gets included in the spouse exemption which reduces the actual taxable part of the estate.