No-consideration transfers, gifts between relatives, and intergenerational planning
No money.
Still a transaction.
A mother puts half the apartment in her son's name, and everyone assumes it is a form-filling exercise. It is a full land transaction: a written document, a declaration to the Tax Authority, registration — and a tax cost even though not a shekel changed hands. The questions nobody asked in advance are the ones that cost money: what happens if the son divorces, when he can sell, and what the parent is left holding. Those get settled before signature.
What passes during life, and what is left to the will.
Gift transactions
A transfer inside the family looks like the simplest thing in the world: a mother puts half the apartment in her son's name, done. In practice it is a full land transaction. It requires a written document, a report to the Tax Authority and registration, and it carries a tax cost even though no money changed hands. One question left unasked — what happens if the son divorces, or sells in two years — can cost far more than the transfer itself.
What we do
- Establishing who qualifies as a "relative" under the law and who does not. That definition decides whether a capital gains exemption is available at all.
- Laying out the full tax picture: the giver's side, the reduced purchase tax on the recipient's side under the purchase tax regulations, and the effect on each party's "single apartment" status.
- Checking what the transfer does to the future: a later sale by the recipient is subject to the statutory restriction on an apartment received as a gift.
- Drafting the giver's protections: a lifetime right of residence or use, a caution note in their favor, and conditions attached to the gift.
- Settling what surrounds the deal: the recipient's prenuptial agreement, balance between siblings, and alignment with an existing will.
- Reporting and registering on time, including the Tax Authority declaration and actual completion of registration.
Where deals stall
A transfer registered properly, with a tax picture you knew about in advance and protections for the giver that stay in force.
Intergenerational transfer
Most families discover the gap between "we agreed among ourselves" and "here is what's written" at the worst possible moment. An agreement between heirs made during the testator's lifetime is void under the Inheritance Law, insurance and pension money never enters the estate at all, and an apartment registered in one parent's name moves nowhere merely because everyone knows who it is meant for. Intergenerational planning is the work of closing those gaps in advance, quietly, while everyone is still here.
What we do
- Mapping the full picture: what is registered, in whose name, what is held through a company, what sits abroad, and what passes directly to a beneficiary rather than through the estate.
- Drafting a will in one of the forms the law recognizes, in language the Land Registry can actually implement: which rights, in what shares, and by what method of division.
- Drafting a durable power of attorney with property-specific instructions: what the agent may sell, mortgage or rent out, and on what conditions.
- Deciding what is best transferred during life, what to leave to the will and what to hold in trust — and the tax cost of each route.
- Securing the position of a second spouse, of children from a previous marriage, and of a child who needs a special arrangement.
- Synchronizing every document so none contradicts another, including prenuptial agreements and existing beneficiary designations.
Where deals stall
One set of documents speaking with one voice — will, durable power of attorney and registration — so the family never has to guess.
Who decides, and what happens next.
An intergenerational transfer answers one question: who owns it. The next two always follow — who decides if the parent no longer can, and what becomes of the apartment afterward. Both are settled in advance, in two documents, not in the middle of a crisis.
What we get asked about transfers within the family
Transferring an apartment to a child for no consideration — is there tax?
There is reduced purchase tax, and usually no capital gains tax. Section 62(a) of the Land Taxation Law provides that a sale of a right in land, and the vesting of a right in an association, without consideration from an individual to a relative, are exempt from tax. Alongside it, regulation 20 of the purchase tax regulations provides that on a sale of a right in land without consideration from an individual to a relative, purchase tax is one third of the ordinary purchase tax. So "a gift means no tax" is not an accurate description of what happens, nor is it a single route open to every family member.
Who counts as a "relative" for this purpose?
It depends which tax. For purchase tax, the regulations define a relative as a spouse — including someone who was a spouse during the six months preceding the sale — a parent, a descendant, a descendant's spouse, and a brother or sister. For the capital gains exemption in s. 62, the statute carries its own definition, which is narrower in some cases. The gap between the two definitions is exactly where a transfer that looked simple turns out to be expensive, so it gets checked before anyone decides who transfers to whom.
A transfer between spouses — is purchase tax payable?
No, where it concerns a residential apartment and a spouse living together with the transferor in that apartment. Regulation 21 of the purchase tax regulations provides that a sale of a right in a residential apartment without consideration to a spouse residing together with them in the apartment is exempt from purchase tax. The shared-residence condition is not decoration — it is what separates a full exemption from an entirely different route.
We siblings agreed among ourselves who gets what. Is that binding?
No, an agreement among siblings dividing a parent's estate while the parent is still alive is not binding. Section 8(a) of the Inheritance Law provides that an agreement concerning a person's inheritance, and a renunciation of it, made during that person's lifetime, are void. A gift intended to take effect only after the giver's death is likewise ineffective unless made by will (s. 8(b)). What does work: a transfer made and registered during life, or a will in one of the forms the statute recognizes — handwritten (s. 19), before witnesses (s. 20), before an authority (s. 22), or oral in the circumstances the statute defines (s. 23).
We transferred the apartment to our child. When can they sell it with an exemption?
Not immediately. The Land Taxation Law imposes a restriction on an apartment received as a gift (s. 49F), which suspends the exemption for a period depending on who the giver was and on whether the recipient lived in the apartment. Beyond that, the apartment entering the child's ownership changes their own tax position on their next purchase. So the timing of the transfer is examined against the recipient's plans, not only the giver's.
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