Dwelling house exemption unnecessary?

D

Dub4Sam

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My father in law offered to buy a house as a gift for my husband recently down the country where we now live. The intention was to help us get a house now while he's alive rather than having to wait for ant inheritance. We were delighted and found one for €110k that needed €20k to make it liveable.

As soon as the purchase was complete the in laws started talking about us waiting 3 years before it would be ours. And that we could "rent" it from them in the meanwhile. We have no other property. We are currently renting with our small children at considerable expense.

I'm guessing that they are thinking of the dwelling house exemption but surely since the house is only worth €130k and that's well under the CAT threshold its entirely unnecessary?

The in laws are in their 80s and not disposed to discuss their reasoning. I'm averse to "making it look like" we live there for any sketchy tax avoidance purposes and see no logic as to why it couldn't be signed over as a gift now.

Would it be possible to sign a waiver against any other claims from the future estate in exchange for signing the house over. We really don't want any more that what we were promised.
 
Dwelling house exemption was amended a couple of years ago and would not apply in this case.

I think it’s poor form for people to make an offer like gifting a home to a child with a family and then changing the rules.

The property if worth €130k would have to be gifted to your husband in full to avoid CAT as you are not related to your in laws by blood the would be an exposure for you to CAT. This could be rectified after a few years to put it into joint ownership.
 
Thanks Joe. Our kids were so excited. We had called to measure it for our furniture and they were so excited at finally having our "forever house". They were gutted when it all went wrong.
I wasn't even told of the change in the deal- the in laws didn't want me to know that the house I was to be living in for the next 3 years wasn't even signed over to the hubby. I never needed it in my own name. They owe me nothing.
 
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Your in-laws buy you a house, and the only catch is they’re hanging onto it because they’re not up to speed on the Dwelling House Exemption?

Hardly grounds for feeling too perturbed, is it?

Just chat it through with them; the salient point is that they’ve made an extraordinarily generous offer.
 
The inlaws showed up at my husbands bedside in intensive care when he was not looking unlike he was going to make it, after a lifetime of never being there. Broken home, father remarried.... father never held up his end of financial support for them as kids etc.

My husband knew it'd all go wrong because he knew his dads need for control. I was a bit wet behind the ears having grown up in the bosom of a rather normal family with a wonderful Dad. It was me who coaxed him to look into accepting his dads offer.

The rent for 3 years wasn't really the only catch. I only became aware of the catch at all when my father in law insisted that we couldn't move any of our own contents into the house (pissy beds from elderly couple who lived there before us to sleep on), couldn't have our children choose their own bedrooms, "child A must sleep in this room, child b in that", our dog HAD to sleep in the shed, we couldn't get a cat etc..etc...

The final straw came when after an hour of measuring "our" bedroom to insist that our beautiful bed we own would in fact, fit, he started insisting the bed head be faced in the direction opposite to the lovely view. I went home and asked my husband what the hell was going on and why his father felt the need to dictate every tiny detail of our lives in the house.

He then told me we'd just be renting for 3 years, under the kind of control we were already seeing prior to even moving in. His dad had insisted on secrecy. Even between ourselves.

We can't see a way that we can live under the thumb of someone who moves the goal posts every time you give him what he wants. We walked away from it all. He still wants us to move in.

He now has a holiday home in a town where he has an ex wife and two sons who don't talk to him. He lives in the original family home worth a 6 figure sum with a woman he married bigamously. They understandably have a need to make sure that in the event of his demise, her standing is secure in that house. His actual first wife, my husbands mother, has her name on the deeds of the family home and is hale and hearty.

The house bought for us was purchased in 2016 before the change to the law. I'm thinking the plan was that the requirement to avail of the dwelling house exemption (to not have a share in any other dwelling) would require my husband to waive any claim he has to the family home.

They refuse to discuss things with us. Its not possible to have a rational discussion with people like that.
 
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