If I buy an Ontario property and put it in my adult child's name, is it a gift?

In Ontario, when a parent purchases a property and places title in an adult child's name — whether by paying the purchase price directly or by having the child take title — the law does not automatically treat this as a gift. Instead, Canadian law applies the presumption of resulting trust: in the absence of clear evidence of a gift intention, the law presumes the child holds the property in trust for the parent.

This is a significant distinction. If the parent dies and the estate claims the property back as a trust asset, the child may need to prove that the parent intended a gift — for example, through evidence of statements made at the time, written correspondence, or the circumstances of the transfer. The burden of proof falls on the child.

If the parent's intention was to make a gift, that should be clearly documented in writing at the time of the transaction: a gift letter, a lawyer's statutory declaration, or other contemporaneous evidence. This protects the child's position both during the parent's lifetime and in estate proceedings.

Note that the analysis is different between spouses — different presumptions apply in family law — and in child-to-parent transfers. For adult children, the resulting trust presumption is the starting point under Pecore v. Pecore principles.