Registration of stock certificates

It's hard to say. If you live together, file taxes jointly, don't expect to lose any large lawsuits, will have an estate of less than $1M when you die, and aren't planning to get divorced, it probably makes no difference. Otherwise:

• If you file taxes separately, dividends and capital gains are taxed to the owner. (Duh.)
• If one of you loses a lawsuit, assets owned only by the person may be somewhat easier to attach than assets owned jointly or assets owned by the other spouse. (This is more of an issue with an indivisible asset like a house than stock where you could easily sell half of it.)
• If your estate is over M, some estate planning involving who owns what can minimize inheritance taxes.
• If you get divorced, the party whose name is on the stock may be somewhat more likely to keep it.

Also, keep in mind that there are several forms of joint ownership. The most common among married couples are joint tenants or tenants by the entirety, in which the surviving spouse owns the asset when either dies, but tenants in common where each owns 50% can be useful for estate planning.

And finally, do you really mean certificates? In most cases it's cheaper and a lot less hassle to keep your stock in a brokerage account in street name.

Regards, John Levine, snipped-for-privacy@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be,

- the estate exclusion for 2007-8 is $2M. In 2009 it's $3.5M. But assuming it drops back to $1M at some point is the conservative way to go.