Father-in-law wants to gift my husband a house – in my husband's name only

[esgill]

My husband's parents have been undergoing a painful divorce for the past five years, arguing via their lawyers about the financial terms.

Now, my father-in-law contacted my husband to say he wants to give him money to buy a house – on the condition it's only in his name. My husband argued over this – but his dad basically said his way or the highway. He says it's not about trust but what else is it – I guess he's disillusioned after five years of legal battles.

Our question: how enforceable is this, actually? His father is abroad, in another continent. We're married, without a pre-nuptial agreement (though we got married abroad, I wonder if we'd need to do anything to legalise it here?

Otherwise, my husband said we could change the contrast so it's in both of our names. (is that easy to do?)

We have a young daughter and I have no intention of leaving my husband unless he does something insane like cheat on me. We've been together now for 10 years and know each other for a further four when we were friends. But I want security, for me and my daughter.

I do know the difference. As I said in my subsequent post, the government website for tax of gifts from overseas parents is down at the moment. If you see my post you will see that I copied other information.

Pulling me to pieces to get a dig in, is unkind, and undeserved. Even if I have made a mistake. I just say as I find. If I am wrong, then so are many others.

There is nothing stopping your husband from taking the money and still buying the house in both your names.

you may have copied what you found, but you clearly do not understand the context of what you read so your answers are misleading and a waste of your time. THERE IS NO GIFT TAX IN THE UK

as I have mentioned, the only circumstances where a transfer of money or assets from parent to child (or vice versa) would be subject to tax is if inheritance tax applies after one of them dies.

You keep saying "the govt website" is down - what you mean is the HMRC community forum. That is notorious for having answers from call centre staff who have limited knowledge of a wide range of taxes and an in depth knowledge of none of them. Leading to many technically incorrect answers on there and the need for other staff to have to openly post corrections on the forum.

what changes Reeves may be, or is, looking at is irrelevant to the context of OP's question.