Locking it away until she is 24

FB13 wrote: »

If the money was given by the aunt to the father outright and the father wanted it back, the father would need to rebut the presumption of advancement by presenting evidence that he didn't intend to make a gift to the daughter but instead intended to retain an interest in the property

That loan argument is a non starter from the beginning.

In the absence of any documentation dated before the money was plopped into the account, you are right of course that the lawyers for the daughter (or for HMRC if relevant) will just say it's presumed to be a gift when the money was given by him to his daughter's account, and he doesn't have anything to prove it isn't. That's how it works and he would lose in court if challenged on it

While you're correct, my view is simply that he's not getting challenged in court by the daughter (and I've already made comment that he may need to correct a tax position) and so really he is just looking for a reason to take the money out of the account to save elsewhere to be able to give her later.

His excuse is that he only put it in the account by mistake because he didn't realise the implications (an error on his part) or that he put it there for safekeeping so his daughter would get the interest while he worked out what to do with it (loaning it to her). As he didn't do any paperwork he knows neither of those 'reasons' will actually pass muster when lawyers get involved.

But, this is a matter between the family rather than going up against the full extent of the law, which only gets involved if someone feels sufficiently wronged to complain.

Like when his daughter passes her driving test but drives him home at 32 mph in a 30 zone and opens the car door into his garage wall, he won't try to sue her or try to bring a private prosecution against her for dangerous driving. When he takes back the cash that he'd temporarily dumped into her account, with the intention to return it later, she won't sue him to get at it. She will probably think she's quite lucky to have a generous father or aunt who is going to give her some money to spend in her early twenties, and it's certainly better to be patient and a bit annoyed (which she might not even be) rather than sever the ties of familial support by saying she doesn't want those kind of parents.

It's a rocky road to say whatever happens in family stays in family because you see some truly horrific cases of abuse that might start somewhere more harmless on the spectrum. Still, I think the dad is justified in reversing his error - his daughter will make mistakes in her lifetime she'll want forgiving for, too -and nothing serious will come of it.

Flobberchops wrote: »

In that case, my account number and sort code are ******* **-**-**, cheers!

I hope you realised by now that MSE forum software has some rudimentary anti fraud protection built in. So if you post your account number, sort code, bank passwords or tax ID, it automatically replaces the digits in the post that you see with *s for everyone else to see. Pretty neat.

Unfortunately it works both ways so if you replace the details with *s yourself as you have just done, it displays the *s on your view of the forum, but then all the rest of us onlookers can see your real details!

You had better be quick and edit your post to flick the "*"s back to real numbers so that to us, they are blanked out.

This technology is hard to keep up with - you have to keep on your toes these days.