john d hamilton wrote:
Our son is soon to get a mortgage to buy his own flat and also expects to
get married in a year or so. We have seen others having the unfortunate
experience of loosing most of their savings after a divorce. Since the
divorce rate is so high these days, we thought if I or my wife were put down
as 'owners in common' on our son's property deeds, then a future spouse
could 'not' walk off undeservedly with half of our son's property value.
Which would include his life's savings invested in the flat.

I can see so many complications with this that I would have to say that
you *need* to consult with a qualified lawyer (which I am not). To be
effective, you would need to have beneficial ownership of your part,
which, I suspect, means that, between you and your son, you would be
taxed on the market rent on that part whether or not he actually pays
that rent. I think you would also be liable for capital gains tax (as
an investment property) on sale and for inheritance tax. Having a two
or three way trust, or having a trust of trusts, owning the property can
only cause complications. You should also consider what happens if one
of you becomes mentally incapable; I believe you will need an
independent attorney for each such member of the trust, before you can sell.

If you go into care, the value of the property will, I assume, be used
in the means test to determine whether you can pay your own fees.

Set against this, my understanding that current divorce settlement
policy was that the split should be based on the relevant contributions
and sacrifices (after considering needs of any children). So, with a
late short marriage, the balance should be close to that of the initial
capital input. I also seem to remember hearing that there is a trend to
taking into account pre-nups. For a longer marriage, a low earning wife
may be considered to have sacrificed income to run the home and her
emotional support to have contributed to the husband's earnings. You
should be talking to the lawyer about whether the risks you perceive
really exist.

The other thing to consider is that, if the marriage does last, the wife
will have an increasing moral right (not used in any legal sense) to the
joint wealth, for the reasons given above.

Also, as you are not living the house, I suspect that the part owned by
your son would still be splittable in the divorce settlement. My guess
is that, if you held out, they would give residence to one party and
require them to pay market rent to the other one.

This is definitely not legal advice, but hopefully identifies enough
potential problems that you will seek such advice if you want to proceed
with this idea.