Putting your home in joint tenancy (with rights of survivorship) with your spouse or your children is basically an attempt to avoid the need to do estate planning. Although it’s relatively easy to do, there can be many undesired problems.

At best, joint tenancy can ONLY work on the death of the first to die. Say your home is held in joint tenancy with your husband. When you die, it goes to your husband – but THEN WHAT? If your husband dies with you or if he doesn’t rush out to do his estate planning, then he’s done nothing and he has all the problems related to having no estate planning at all.

Joint tenancy can also result in an unintentional disinheriting your family. Say you’re married, and you and your wife have three little kids. Normally, you would want your home and other property to go to your wife, and then to your children on her death. But joint tenancy results in a gift to your wife only. If she later remarries and has more children, there is no way to guarantee that your property will end up going to your children. Maybe your kids won’t get along with their step-father, which irritates your wife, and which may result in your property being left to your wife’s new husband and children on her death.

Joint tenancy can also be problematic because all owners must sign any paperwork to manage the property. If your husband becomes incapacitated or if he just up and leaves, it is impossible to sell or refinance your jointly-owned home without his consent. The only solution may be to turn to expensive and public court proceedings.

Sometimes an elderly parent either puts her children on the family home or even gives her home to her children. Many times this is a recipe for disaster. Again, you need the consent of all the owners to sell or refinance the property. If you add your four adult children as co-owners, you need unanimous consent to do anything. In most families, it’s difficult (perhaps impossible) to get everyone to agree.

Also, since every child is a co-owner of your home, the property is subject to claims of the creditors of each child. The child’s partial interest may even be seized to pay their debts.

There are techniques where a married couple can reduce their estate taxes because of they can “stack” the amounts that can pass without an estate tax. If a couple owns all their property as joint tenants, they can lose one half of their estate tax exemptions.