Dad paid cash for house and we want to put it in my name
"If your parents are not on the deed then I am not sure how it could be their house. It seems like the sale was done unofficially. If your parents or aunt pass away this could be a real mess. Make this official ASAP. It might be possible for your aunt to gift you the house. This may have tax implication but the article below suggests that it may not be an issue. http://www.bankrate.com/finance/real-estate/aunt-be-taxed-for-bargain-price-on-house.aspx As you're probably aware, owning a house is expensive. Make sure you can afford taxes, bills, and maintenance. Things add up fast.  I should have address the ""rent to own"" plan. If you plan on transferring the house from your aunt to you by renting with $0 monthly payment and then claiming it is all paid off, then I think this would be considered a gifting of the house from your aunt to you. It sounds like fraud to claim you paid something that you didn't. In the end, it is either a gift from your parents or from your aunt. The sooner you get the house in your name the better"
"I recommend reading What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent? and making a list of expenses.  You have a known expense, the rent, and the assumption that it will rise a bit each year. If not each year, eventually the landlord will bump it, and on average, the rent should track inflation.  The buy side is the complete unknown, especially to us here. The mortgage and taxes are just the beginning. My ongoing issue in the buy/rent debate is that it's easy to buy ""too big"" or at least far bigger that what you are renting.  One extreme - a couple moves from their one bedroom apartment into their purchased 3BR home with far more space than they ever use. No need to paint the full picture of numbers, the house is a money pit, and they live for the house.  Other end - Couple already renting a nice sized home, and they buy a similar one. They rent out the two spare bedrooms for 5 years until they have kids and want their privacy back. They bought smart, for less than market price, and from day one, the mortgage was lower than the rent they paid. By year 5, having sent the extra income to pay down the mortgage, they've paid down half the loan. As the kids come along, they refi to a new 30 yr fixed at 3.5%, and the payment is tiny compared to the rest of their budget.  Simply put, the ratio of house price to rent for that same house is not a constant. When the ratio is high, it's time to rent. When it swings very low, it's worth considering a purchase. But the decision is never clear until every detail is known. The time may be perfect, and the day after you close, you lose your job, or in a good scenario, get a raise and are relocated. Just because you bought low yesterday, doesn't mean the market will pay you a good price today, it takes time for out-of-whack pricing to come back to normal.  A simple question? Maybe. But we first need a lot of details to help you understand what you are considering." What is never mention was that even though top marginal taxes were high, even extreme, nobody paid them. Reagan lowered taxes but also made lots of people pay taxes that had never had to pay them before. You could essentially write off losses from a business indefinitely. Failing to earn money on an investment was also a loss. My dad, on the advice of an IRS tax auditor, built a greenhouse and we started selling flowers. But it was intended to never make any money. It's sole purpose was to reduce tax liability.  These tax shelters were geared as personal tax shelters. So what was done to service bigger business was to create what was called holding corporations. These corporations would take investors money and basically just sit on it. Which could then be claimed as a loss. But if these spread between bank interest CDs) paid on the holdings of this corporation and the interest cost of borrowing against those holdings hit a sweet spot they would build a strip mall or something similar. This was the trigger to the boom bust when the Feds raised/lowered the interest rates, and had a lot to do with stagflation at the time. They would turn key the project and reinvest in holdings. People could essentially bring their taxes down as much as they wanted, even to zero. It just meant that they had to put more money into holding corporations.  When Reagan changed the tax code to disallow these tax write offs he put lots of very wealthy people in the poor house overnight. They went to bed one night and woke up with all their investors wanting their money. I know a guy that operated a holding corporation that still cries about it to this day. Of course he has never really financially recovered either.   ***  The point is that what the tax code listed as your top marginal tax had no bearing on what you paid in tax prior to Reagan. 34% tax was WAY more than most of these people ever dreamed of paying in taxes prior to Reagan. "Having a separate checking account for the business makes sense. It simplifies documenting your income/expenses. You can ""explain"" every dollar entering and exiting the account without having to remember that some of them were for non-business items. My credit union allowed me to have a 2nd checking account and allowed me to put whatever I wanted as the name on the check. I think this looked a little better than having my name on the check. I don't see the need for a separate checking account for investing. The money can be kept in a separate savings account that has no fees, and can even earn a little interest. Unless you are doing a lot of investment transactions a month this has worked for me. I fund IRAs and 529 plans this way. We get paychecks 4-5 times a month, but send money to each of the funds once a month. You will need a business account if the number of transactions becomes large. If you deposit dozens of checks every time you go to the bank, the bank will want to move you to a business account." "&gt;It seems that the corporation was ordered to pay, no? The man does not claim he can't pay it, he claims the corporate entity that is supposed to pay it can't pay it.  Exactly.  Robert K (Rich Dad) established a company called Rich Global LLC.  Which was sued by his partners in that company for failure to pay their agreed upon percentage of income.  [From this article](http://abcnews.go.com/Business/rich-dad-poor-dad-author-files-bankruptcy/story?id=17463158#.UHhXSG_A_6M): The company had been weighed down by a lawsuit filed by Learning Annex, one of Kiyosaki's earliest backers who had helped arrange his public speaking events earlier on, Forbes reported.  Bill Zanker, the founder and president of Learning Annex, sued Kiyosaki after he allegedly failed to pay a percentage of profits from his speaking engagements. A district judge in New York awarded Learning Annex $23.7 million.  ""I took Kiyosaki's brand and made it bigger,"" Zanker told the New York Post. ""The deal was I would get a percentage, and he reneged. We had a signed letter of intent. The Learning Annex is his greatest promoter. We put his 'Rich Dad' brand on a stage. We truly prepared him for great fame and riches. But when it was time for him to pay up, he said 'no.' ""   Robert Kiyosaki, author of the book, ""Rich Dad, Poor Dad"" filed for corporate bankruptcy through one of his companies, Rich Global LLC.  A few years ago Robert K started another company called Rich Dad Co.  He shifted all sales from books, seminars videos etc from his first company to the new company.  It seems this was a fantastic stroke of lucky timing - or he purposefully did this while talks were souring between him and his former business partners.  The former company is a shell with very little assets.   That's pretty convenient.  &gt;This man probably runs several businesses.  Yes he does - I have provided examples of this in my previous posts.  &gt;there is a chance some may go under.  Go under?  His book sales are not diminishing, he still does sell out seminars, he is paid for public speaking.  This isn't about a company that failed to become successful.    &gt;If you don't want to invest with someone who doesn't have skin in the game, all you have to do is don't invest.  Are you even aware of who is partners are / did you even read any of the information I have provided to you?  His partners were the people who made him famous.  They backed him and propelled him to the level he is currently at.  They are asking for their fair share of what they created - and a court of law agrees with them.  Robert K screwed them.  Example:  I am a low level motivational speaker.  You are a promoter and believe in my message.  You and I go into business.  My job is to continue to write books, speak and create videos - you back me financially and create a PR and marketing campaign to propel me to a higher level of public awareness.  You do your job and make me famous.  When it comes time to pay you - I reorganize the company and screw you.    I really can't continue this conversation.  I have provided plenty of information, supporting links and examples.  It is clear that you are unwilling or just unable to concede (at ANY LEVEL) that it is even possible that someone would/could manipulate BK laws to avoid liability.  This discussion is turning into the equivalent of someone trying to describe the color red to a blind person.  No matter what I present to you - you just can't see red.  You are obviously entitled to your opinion and just for the record I have not downvoted a single one of your posts - however, due to your instance and firmly held belief that this type of business practice is ""smart business"" I restate that (in my opinion) you are part of the problem.   *edit: Yet more fat fingered spelling mistakes... my typing skills need improvement" The two of you inherited the house. unless the will specified otherwise, it's half each. Because you're not married, its a partnership agreement, and unless there's a written contract, either the two of you agree on how to handle the home, or it's off to court you go. If you were both supposed to pay for the home, and he failed to for a a while, that would put him in breach of contract which I would think gives you a good position in court. On the other hand, if you are at all concerned about your safety from this louse, remember, he knows exactly where the house is. This is why we tell people not to co-sign unless they are able and willing to risk that money becoming a gift... or are able and willing to treat it as business rather than family. Unfortunately that advice is a bit late now to help you. When you cosigned, you promised the bank that you would make any payments he didn't. The bank doesn't care why he didn't, they just want their money on time. Getting him to repay you for covering this is strictly between the two of you, and unless you signed paperwork at the time establishing a contract other than the promise to cover his loan this becomes Extremely Messy. First step is to make the payments so the loan doesn't continue acquiring fees and hurting your credit rating, and keep it from falling behind again. Then you have to convince him to repay the money you have effectively given him. Depending on your relationship, and financial situations, you may decide to carry him for a while and trust that he'll pay you back when he can, or sic a lawyer on him. You need to make that decision, recognizing that it may be a matter of how much family drama you are willing to tolerate. "This is more of a long comment but may answer user's situation too. I have dealt with joint mortgages before in 3 states in the US.  Basically in all three states if one party wants to sell, the home goes up for sale.  This can be voluntary or it can go up via auction (not a great choice). In 2 of the 3 states the first person to respond to the court about the property, the other party pays all legal fees.  Yes you read this right.  In one case I had an ex who was on my mortgage, she had no money invested in the house ($0 down and still in college with no job).  [If she wasn't on the mortgage I wouldn't have gotten loan - old days of dumb rules] When we split her lawyer was using the house as a way to extort other money from me.  Knowing the state's laws I already filed a petition for the property but put it on hold with the clerk.  Meaning that no one else could file but if someone tried mine would no longer be on hold.  My ex literally spent thousands of dollars on this attorney and they wanted to sell the house and get half the money from the house.  So sale price minus loan amount divided between us.  This is the law in almost every state if there is no formal contract.  I was laughing because she wanted what would be maybe 50-75K for paying no rent, no money down, and me paying for her college. Finally I broke her attorney down (I didn't lawyer up but had many friends who were lawyers advising).  After I told her lawyer she wasn't getting anything - might have said it in not a nice way - her lawyer gave me her break down.  To paraphrase she said, ""We are going to file now.  My assistant is in the court clerk's office.  You can tell the court whatever you want.  Maybe they will give you a greater percentage since you put the money down and paid for everything but you are taking that chance.  But you will pay for your lawyer and you will need one.  And you will pay for me the entire time.  And this will be a lengthy process.  You would be better served to pay my client half now."" Her office was about 2 blocks from court.  I laughed at her and simply told her to have her assistant do whatever she wanted.  I then left to go to clerk's office to take the hold off.  She had beat me to the office (I moved my car out of her garage).  By the time I got there she was outside yelling at her assistant, throwing a hissy fit, and papers were flying everywhere.  We ""settled"" the next day.  She got nothing other than the things she had already stolen from me.  If I wouldn't have known about this loophole my ex would have gotten or cost me through attorney's fees around 40-50K for basically hiring a lawyer.  My ex didn't really have any money so I am pretty sure lawyer was getting a percent. Moral of the story: In any contract like this you always want to be the one bringing in the least amount of money.  There are no laws that I know of in any country where the person with the least amount on a contract will come out worse (%-wise).  Like I said in the US the best case scenario that I know of for joint property is that the court pays out the stakeholder all of their contributions then it splits things 50/50.  This is given no formal contract that the court upholds.  Don't even get me started with hiring attorneys because I have seen the courts throw out so many property contracts it isn't even funny.  One piece of advice on a contract if you do one.  Make it open and about percentages.  Party A contributes 50K, Party B 10K, Party A will pay this % of mortgage and maintenance and will get this % when home is sold.  I have found the more specific things are the more loopholes for getting out of them. There are goofy ass laws everywhere that make no sense.  Why would the person first filing get their lawyers paid for???  The court systems in almost all countries can have their comical corners.   You will never be able to write a contract that covers everything.  If the shower handle breaks, who pays for it?  There is just too many one-off things with a house. You are in essence getting in a relationship with this person.  I hear others say it is a business transaction.   NO.  You are living with this person.  There is no way to make it purely business.  For you to be happy with this outcome both of you must remain somewhat friends and at the very least civil with each other.   To add on to the previous point, the biggest risk is this other person's character and state of mind.  They are putting in the most money so you don't exactly have a huge money risk.  You do have a time and a time-cost risk.  Your time or the money you do have in this may be tied up in trying to get your money out or house sold.  A jerk could basically say that you get nothing, and make you traverse the court system for a couple years to get a few thousand back. And that isn't the worst case scenario.  Always know your worst case scenario.  Yours is this dude is in love with you.  When he figures out 2-3 years later after making you feel uncomfortable the entire time that you are not in love with him, he starts going nuts.  So he systematically destroys your house.  Your house worth plummets, you want out, you can't sell the house for price of loan, lenders foreclose or look to sue you, you pay ""double rent"" because you can't live with the guy, and you have to push a scooter to get to work. That is just the worst case scenario.  Would I do this if I were 25 and had no family?  Yea, why not if I trusted the other person and was friends with them?  If it were just a co-worker?  That is really iffy with me.    Edit: Author said he will not be living with the person.  So wording can be changed to say ""potentially"" in front of living with him in my examples."