ringfencing gift to married daughter

You could put the money in a separate bank account in your name and then allow her access to the account.

Chris

Not easily, no. One of the fundamental aspects of marriage is the pooling of property between the two partners. With the exception of clearly personal items, such as clothing and low-value items such as jewellery and electronics, a court will be reluctant to apportion ownership non-equitably at the time of divorce. That's particularly the case for fungible items such as money.

More generally, if you want to give your daughter money but with strings (like these) attached, then you aren't really giving her a gift at all. If you don't trust her to manage her own financial affairs sufficiently well, including making correct decisions in the case of some hypothetical future event, then find some other way of subsidising her lifestyle other than by means of an outright gift.

Mark

That would work, but it would still be part of your estate if you were to die before she'd spent it. This may or may not matter for tax purposes.

Perhaps you could simply lend her the money at zero interest.

Robert

Thanks for the responses so far, I would have thought this was quite a common problem given the high levels of divorces nowadays!