Consequences of separation on jointly owned property

07/03/2013 - 18:57

My friend has separated from his partner.  They own a property together but not as husband and wife.  One partner wishes to transfer the title to the other partner and settle out of court taking from the other half the value of the property in a private deal.  What is involved in doing this?

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They need to go to a notaio, taking with them a copy of their original atto (from the notaio when they bought the property).I'm not clear whether they are or were married to each other, or if one or other is still married to someone else, but if no marriage enters into the equation it should be very straightforward.The notaio will almost certainly recommend doing an ordinary act of sale, and the notaio's fees and the taxes payable on a property transfer will need to be paid. They can almost certainly ígnore the requirements for thermal or any other certification (because the purchaser is already a co-proprietor) so it should be possible to do this deal very quickly.Another (cheaper) alternative would be an act of donation rather than sale, but most notaios counsel against this, and if I were in the position of your friends I wouldn't go down that route.

Thank you very much for that useful information, They are not married to each other or to anyone else. But I thought as much about your reply but he is in the disbelieving and how can things get so complicated - mode at the moment !! The act of sale route: I was stunned to find out the other day that according to our local Geometra he is going to need to pay in the region of E5000 which will probably cover everything luckily divided by 2 as in a shared expense. So in this case I am going to suggest to him to get in touch with the notaio directly in order to get this sorted out. I can be use an an interpreter since my Italian is reasonably good. My friend quite rightly said that he didn't pay that in fees etc. when they bought the property as just about habitable, in 2007!!! I will certainly inform him to talk to a notaio regarding the Act of donation route, as an alternative too. 

Donations are advised against, because in a dispite in Italian succession law, the value of lifetime gifts and donations are  added to the value of assets owned on death to calculate the total share owed to each heir, and there is a risk that the property could be returned, in spite of it having been sold to a third party. Although this is very rare, it is enough to make banks wary of giving mortgages on donated propties, so makes them very difficult to sell.