<prompt> Human: Throwaway because I dont necessarily want private financial and personal details tied to my normal handle.A few months ago, my wifes grandma passed away. No need to be sad, she was in her 90s and lived a very, very full life. It did kind of freak my mom and dad in law out a little bit though because they had to struggle with our state trying to take a lot of her assets. Dont ask me all the details, I dont really even know them myself.Long story short, my parents-in-law now want to sign over their property to us sometime in the next five to ten years so avoid the kind of problems that they had with my wifes grandma. They have a fairly valuable house along with close to 100 acres of land, its probably valued around the 500K range, which is very high for the area of the country that were in. The property is already fully paid off, they dont owe anything on it. Her mom and dad say theyll continue to pay the insurance and property taxes as long as theyre around, and whatever happens to the property after theyre gone or no longer able to live on their own is up to us. They also say they are contributing to an investment fund that would hopefully take care of each long after theyre gone as well.Now there is one small factor that could come into play: My wife has a younger brother thats just barely 20 years old and just had a baby girl with his girlfriend that just dropped out of high school. Lets just say that, while we love him very much, hes probably not exactly going astronomical places in his life other than making hopefully a fairly good wage in a career in welding. My wifes parents are skeptical on how the arrangement with his girlfriend will eventually work out as well. I frankly dont blame them.My wife and I have talked about it a bit, and we came to a few conclusions: We wont be using the house and property for ourselves after her parents pass, we dont really have much intention right now to move back to our hometown. If within ten to twenty years, things are trustworthy with her brother, we might give it to them. But if not, wed probably just sell it and see to it that the proceeds went to our nieces college education.Obviously, lots of things for us to consider. My reason for coming here is asking for any applicable advice for this situation? Should we even take the property in our name at all? What all should we consider in this situation?Assistant: This is always a bad idea. Do not ever put your assets in someone elses name and do not ever let someone else put their assets in your name. There are no benefits of doing it and there are tons of possible issues that arise.Your wifes parents should talk to an estate planning attorney and prepare a will andor trust to handle the transition and avoid the problems that the grandmother faced.Human: What kind of issues are examples of why its a bad idea?Assistant: You and your wife are out for a nice Sunday drive when, WHAM, one of you runs over a baby or toddler, or whatever. You get sued and your parents lose their house because its your asset.Your parents have some friends over. Your parents forgot to cover that old well out back or fix the stairs, or whatever. Their friend falls down and breaks his hip. You get sued because its your asset. You and your parents get into a fight and stop talking. You decide to be a jerk and evict them from your property.You and your parents get into a fight. The Government wants its property taxes that you owe and your parents dont feel like being generous and paying your property taxes.You file for SSI, Bankruptcy, Welfare, or any other government program that examines your assets. You have a giant, juicy asset that either disqualifies you from the program or gets taken.These are just a handful of the complications. Its only limited by your imagination.Human: I see where youre coming from, but that seems like the same kind of logic that says I shouldnt go drive down the road because a runaway semi might run me over.  <response>: Not really. The real problem is that your in-laws solution is needlessly complicated and opens you up to unnecessary risk, when theres a perfectly good, low-risk solution already available a good will and estate planning. Using your driving example, its more like if you had a choice between flying somewhere long distance almost certainly not going to be in an accident or driving small, but relatively much higher chance of being in an accident, and you chose to drive specifically because for some reason you think its safer. You may not get hit by a semi, but youve opened yourself up to unnecessary risk because of a misconception, when the other option was actually safer. 