There is nothing like preparing for the future by making sure that you are recycling, reducing and reusing where you can. Becoming more sustainable in your everyday life is great, but how do you make sure that you keep everything sustainable? Well, one day when you die, the kids can inherit your home and that’s one of the best ways you can be sustainable because that requires you to pass your house down rather than them needing to have loads of their own houses.
This way, instead of having a housing stock, your children get to benefit from your home. The only consideration is the fact that you will need an inheritance lawyer. The fact that you can give your children something amazing one day is exciting whether they decide to sell it and rebuild the land or they decide to keep it is completely up to them. The point is you’d be giving them an inheritance that they can really benefit from. So let’s take a look at how you can work on passing the house to your kids.
- You can sell it to them. Some parents choose to sell their homes to their children, but they have to do it at a fair market value. Instead of just handing your kids back house, you could sell it to them and allow them to buy it. They don’t necessarily have to mortgage it if it’s already mortgage free but if you sell it to them, you’re going to be able to give them a house that they can live in and you can declare as an income.
- Gift it to your children. You do need to speak to a lawyer here, because you need to make sure that gifting is the right thing. When you give property, you should always remember that if the recipient gets into financial trouble in the future, that property could then be foreclosed on and taken out of the family in a bankruptcy. It’s always a good idea to transfer that property to your children at the time of your death because of the tax implications. Gifting property is always a requirement with a lawyer, so make sure that you are not trying to do this by yourself.
- You can bequeath it. Through a revocable living trust, you can bequeath your property to your children to pass on after you die. A revocable living trust can be changed throughout your lifetime, which gives you the option to change your mind when you want to. It also allows you to spell out how you’d like the property to be handled once you do die. This is something you should discuss with your family first so that you can ensure that everybody is up to date on the property taxes, insurance and maintenance costs.
- Transferring the deed. A transfer on death deed works in a similar way to a payable on death designation. Most people use it to transfer assets to their heirs, and you can do that with your house. Make sure that you get all of the information that you need from a lawyer.
