Transferring a house, a site or land to a son or daughter is, in pure conveyancing terms, a deed executed, stamped and registered. The reason it needs real advice is that it is almost never only a conveyancing question — it is a succession decision, a tax decision and a family decision arriving together.
The Questions Behind the Deed
Tax, which is frequently the whole reason for the timing — and which belongs with your accountant and Revenue rather than here. Get it before anything is signed, because a transfer executed in the wrong shape is expensive and sometimes impossible to unwind. Whether you will continue living there, and if so whether a right of residence should be reserved. That is a right, registered as a burden on the folio, allowing the transferor to remain in the property, sometimes with rights of support or maintenance attached. It is common in Irish family transfers, genuinely protective, and it has consequences: it affects value and marketability, it can complicate a later sale or mortgage by the child, and its precise terms matter enormously. What happens if circumstances change — a marriage breakdown, a bankruptcy, or the child predeceasing the parent. Whether other children are provided for, and how that sits with your will, because a substantial lifetime transfer to one child reshapes an estate whether or not anybody says so. And the question people find hardest to ask: can you afford to give away an asset you may later need?
Separate Advice, and Sales Out of an Estate
Each side needs their own solicitor, and this is the point most often resisted within families. A parent transferring and a child receiving have different interests, and each is entitled to advice from someone whose only duty is to them — including advice not to proceed. That matters most where the parent is elderly, where a right of residence is involved, where other children may feel differently, or where the transfer forms part of a wider succession arrangement. It is not distrust. It is what stops the transaction being questioned after a death, which is exactly what nobody wants to be arguing about. On sales out of an estate, which are routine here: the authority to sell must be in place, usually meaning a grant of representation has issued — a separate process with its own timeline that frequently has to run before conveyancing can properly begin. Beneficiaries may need to consent. Where the deceased held unregistered title, or the title was never dealt with after an earlier death in the family, there is more work again and sometimes a first registration. These run far better where the estate and the conveyancing are handled together rather than by two advisers each waiting on the other — which is why the firm’s probate practice at probatesolicitordublin.ie sits alongside this work, and why farmland transfers connect to farmsolicitor.ie.
Thinking About Transferring Property to a Family Member?
Take the tax advice first, then the legal shape. And expect to be told that the other side needs their own solicitor - that is protection rather than formality.
Call 01 5827148