Joint tenancy question

km1500

supposing you were a widow(er) or a single person and wanted to leave your house or flat to your son on your death 

one way obviously would be to make a will and on your death probate would be required and eventually the transfer would be made 

are there any advantages or disadvantages of doing it a different way so the stress etc of getting probate would not be required ie to have your son as a joint tenancy at the land registry which would mean on your death they will get it straight away

ignore for the moment the fact that the son may well have to pay extra 3% sdlt if they bought their own property under this arrangement

sammyjammy

What if the person needed to care?  It would look like deprivation of capital to avoid paying for it.

Keep_pedalling

Getting probate is not that stressful, and is a poor reason to do it this way. You can’t really ignore the additional tax issues, apart from SDLT there is the issue of CGT (assuming the son does not live with you and is unlikely to leave home).

Things could get really messy if your son died first, became bankrupt or got divorced. 

km1500

thanks for all those thoughts yes I am guessing that only 50% of the property would be cgt-free as a main residence