You have moved out of the joint German house after a separation. The former spouse and your mutual child continue to live there. Now your share is to be transferred for an agreed sum. In addition to the compensation and financing issue, the familial agreement requires its own tax review of your actual acquisition and use history.
Describe the transfer in content
Our editorial recommendation: present the acquisition contract, share, actual move-out and the intended transfer draft together to the tax advisor. Describe who has lived in the house since then and what consideration is envisaged. The article does not assign an unknown overall rule of a separation based solely on a single payment.
If there are multiple shares or earlier additional acquisition steps, their history will be recorded separately. A shared family home does not automatically mean that both persons have the same tax circumstances or the same result.
Own residential use is a personal prerequisite
§ 23 Absatz 1 EStG contains a time-limit fact and exceptions because of personal residential purposes for private disposals of land. [ESTG-23] The continued familial connection is therefore not by itself the complete answer. In particular, a personal move-out and the subsequent use by other persons belong in the review.
The BFH decided in judgment IX R 11/21 of 14.02.2023 on such a case: the spouse who had moved out did not continue to use his subsequently sold co-ownership share for his own residential purposes merely because his former wife and the mutual minor child remained in the house. [BFH-IX-R11-21]
This article does not transfer the result indiscriminately to every surrender to a child. The exact group of users and the concrete residential situation were essential for the decision. Have both legal residential-use alternatives and the actual period examined on the basis of your documents.
The separation explains the occasion, not automatically the tax exemption
In the same judgment the transfer of the share for consideration within the scope of a divorce settlement was treated as a disposal, although the former wife had threatened an auction in the event of refusal. [BFH-IX-R11-21] A negotiation perceived as burdensome is therefore not automatically classified here as a tax-irrelevant transaction.
The article does not recommend remaining in an untenable living situation and does not make any decision about acute protection needs. It helps to present the already existing factual situation completely for appropriate advice.
An invented compensation with an open tax position
A former spouse initially regards the intended compensation as an amount fully available for their next housing. In the conversation the tax question had only been answered with the sentence “it was after all our family home”.
They now submit their own course for review. Only after classification will a required tax position, other obligations and available funds be planned separately. The result is not a blanket refusal of the family solution, but an agreement whose economic consequences are convincingly explained before commitment.