IHTM14833 - Lifetime transfers: associated operations: gifts between spouses or civil partners

Where property given unconditionally by one spouse or civil partner (IHTM11032) to the other is subsequently transferred by the latter to a third party, you cannot use the associated operations provisions to attribute the transfer to the first spouse or civil partner.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury assured Parliament that this would be HMRC’s practice, and it was publicised in a Press Release dated 8 April 1975.

However, where the transfer between spouses or civil partners is part of a more complex series of transactions which taken together are the way one of them makes a disposition to a third party, it may be more appropriate to use the associated operations to allocate the transfer(s) to the correct transferor.