Eligibility is the first gate of a Dubai gift transfer, and the narrowest. DLD restricts the concessional 0.125% route to two categories of recipient; everything outside them is a sale at 4%, whatever the parties call it and whether or not money changes hands.
Three pairings qualify: parent to child, child to parent, and spouse to spouse. Nothing else does. Sibling transfers do not qualify. Grandparent to grandchild does not qualify. Aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins do not qualify. Inlaws do not qualify. Stepparents and stepchildren do not qualify, because the route follows documented blood and marriage lines, not household composition.
The narrowness is deliberate. A concessional rate 32 times below the standard fee creates an obvious incentive to dress sales up as gifts, so DLD confines the route to relationships that can be verified mechanically from civil documents — a birth certificate linking parent and child, a marriage certificate linking spouses. Every relationship that would require judgement rather than a document sits outside the route.
Parent-child transfers require the child’s birth certificate naming the parent. Spousal transfers require the marriage certificate; UAE citizens may submit the marriage contract or Family Book. Religious marriages without civil registration are not accepted. Where a certificate was issued outside the UAE, it must complete the consular legalisation chain with sworn Arabic translation before it can be relied on — the rules are set out on the Documents and Attestation page.
Name consistency is checked strictly across the file. The most common eligibility delay is not a missing document but a mismatch: a maiden name on the birth certificate against a married name on the title deed, or a transliteration variation between passport and certificate. Where names differ, a clarifying civil document linking the two is required before the trustee will proceed.
An individual may gift property to a company they wholly own, and a wholly-owned company may gift property to its sole shareholder. The condition is sole ownership, evidenced by the constitutional documents — trade licence, certificate of incorporation, share certificate, memorandum and articles of association — and the company must be registered with DLD before the gift application is submitted. The full corporate route, including foreign-registered companies, is covered on the Company Gifting page.
A transfer to anyone outside the two categories is processed as an ordinary sale transfer: 4% DLD fee on assessed value, standard documentation, no gift concession. Structuring around the rule — for example, chaining two gifts through a qualifying relative to reach a non-qualifying one — runs into the double-gifting restriction under Law No. (14) of 2017, under which a previously gifted property may lose the concessional rate on a subsequent gift. Chains of this kind should be treated as unavailable rather than as a planning device.
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Last reviewed: July 2026