My wife and I would like to gift money to our children. From the IRS.GOV site, we believe that we are each able to gift up to $17,000 to each child without surpassing the limit for filing Form 709. The question is whether or not the payments have to be structured in a certain way to meet this criteria. For example, if we wish to give one child $10,000 from each of us, do we need to write two separate checks with some distinguishing memo notation, or can we provide one $20,000 check? $20,000 would surpass the limit if it were from one of us, but not if it is from both. Any checks would be written from our joint account.
We want to make certain that we are following the rules.
