Your basis in the property is the purchase price, and let me give you an example of how this works. If your mom put your name on the deed to her house and she paid $100,000 for the home 20 years ago, but now that home has appreciated to $200,000, when she put your name on the deed, it's a gift, and you get mother's purchase price basis of $100,000 on the house.

                    

Now, I'm going to simplify the example from here just to make it easy to understand, but if Mom passed away the next week, and you the child were going to sell the house a week later for $200,000, the IRS would say, "Hmm, you have $100,000 of profit," and you will owe capital gains tax on that $100,000. You can end up paying $20,000 of capital gains tax just because your mom put your name on the deed. Now, if your mother instead had left you the home in her will and you inherited it, you get what's called stepped-up basis, which is fair market value at the date of death. In other words, you would inherit the $200,000 house at a $200,000 fair market value, and when you sold it a week later for $200,000, there is no profit, no capital gains tax.

                    

So, I've seen many unfortunate situations where clients were trying to avoid a probate, which is the county court process to transfer assets from a deceased person to a beneficiary, that would have cost maybe 2 or $3,000, and they were trying to avoid that, and they put their kids' names on the deed, and it ended up costing the kids tens of thousands of dollars in capital gains tax. So I do not recommend adding your children's names to your deed. Instead, let them inherit.