Q. I am an 80-year-old widow living in a home that my husband and I built 50 years ago. We’re contemplating changing the ownership in equal shares to two of my children’s names and myself. I am planning on continuing to pay all the bills, which come up annually, as well as any other upkeep while I continue living in the house. Would I be entitled to any of the $250,000 tax exemption should we sell?

-M.R., Pawtucket, R.I.

A. It depends.

If you’re adding the names of your children to the title of your house solely for convenience – you don’t relinquish any of your rights to the property, for instance, and you don’t grant the children any “incidents of ownership” in the property – there should be no problem, said William R. Pirolli, president of the Rhode Island Society of Certified Public Accountants.

If that’s the case, the procedure you mentioned in your question shouldn’t trigger any tax consequences (such as federal gift-tax issues), Pirolli said in an interview at his office in Warwick, R.I., where he is managing director of Pirolli Deller & Conaty PC, a CPA firm. “It’s as if she’s making someone the beneficiary,” he said.

So if you eventually wind up selling the house, you would be entitled to exclude up to $250,000 of the profit from federal income tax (assuming you meet all the other requirements: you’ve owned and lived in the house for at least two of the five years before the sale, for instance), Pirolli said.

Why would you consider adding the names of your children to the title? You may simply want the property to pass directly to them upon your death, avoiding the potential expense and delay of the probate process.

Technically, the procedure you’re considering could be considered a gift for federal gift-tax purposes, said David T. Riedel, head of the Rhode Island Bar Association’s committee on probate and trust. So, at the least, it could trigger the requirement for filing a federal gift-tax return – and could have other consequences down the road, he said.

In practice, however, “People just tend to ignore” the technical aspects, treating the procedure as a transfer for convenience, and tax authorities typically don’t view it as any kind of tax-avoidance scheme, Riedel said in a phone interview.

“It’s something we run into all the time,” he said. And, as a practical matter, “we all tend to treat it the same” – as a matter of convenience with no tax implications, said Riedel, a partner with Tillinghast Licht Perkins Smith & Cohen LLP, a law firm in Providence.

“It’s one of those areas where reality is not quite in tune with what the law literally has to say,” he said.

Besides, most such transactions are relatively small in dollar value, and wouldn’t trigger gift-tax or estate-tax consequences anyway, he said.

Keep in mind, though, that this is a tricky issue, so you should strongly consider consulting a professional tax and/or legal adviser before you make a move, Pirolli said.

For instance, if you’re considering more formal steps, such as granting ownership of the property to your children and retaining a life estate for yourself, other rules would apply beyond what I’ve described here today.

A professional can interview you in detail and then determine how the rules apply to your particular circumstances.

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(Neil Downing is a Journal staff writer and author of ” The New IRAs and How to Make Them Work for You.” If you have questions about your money matters, call us at 1-401-277-7484 or 1-888-697-7656 and leave a message. (When calling toll-free, please ask for ext. 7484.) We can’t reply personally; as many questions and issues as possible will be addressed in this column.)

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AP-NY-10-06-03 0620EDT