You’ve said yes. Now set it up so it protects everyone, including you.

Plenty of families do exactly that. Parents who help with a home deposit now give an average of $74,040, according to Mozo’s 2025 Bank of Mum and Dad survey, and three in four of them don’t expect to be repaid. Yet Money.com.au’s 2026 survey found that 64% of first-home buyers who had family help had no formal written agreement with their parents.

The number is the easy part. How you give it (and what you agree before you do) is what decides whether this stays a generous act or quietly becomes a problem for your child, their relationship, your retirement, or your other kids. None of that means you shouldn’t help. It means helping well is worth an hour of thought first.

Almost every form of family help is a version of one of these three, and choosing between them is the single most important decision you’ll make.

A gift

You give the money with no expectation of repayment. Simple, generous, and clean for your child’s borrowing. But once it’s gifted, it’s gone: it’s exposed if your child separates from a partner, it can’t easily be recovered if your own circumstances change, and lenders will usually want it confirmed in writing, typically a signed letter (sometimes a statutory declaration or the lender’s own form) saying it’s a gift that doesn’t have to be repaid.

A loan

You lend the money, documented in a written agreement (a loan deed), with terms for if and how it’s repaid. More protective, as long as it’s signed before the money moves and actually run like a loan: it can help shield the contribution in a relationship breakdown and keeps a path to recovering the funds. But the way it’s structured can affect how much your child can borrow, because lenders usually count a family loan as a debt, and each lender treats it a little differently. More on gift or loan.

An equity share or guarantee

You take a documented share of the property, or you go guarantor rather than handing over cash. Going guarantor usually means offering part of the equity in your home as security for part of your child’s loan, often enough for them to avoid lenders mortgage insurance. You don’t make repayments. But if your child can’t pay and the sale of their home doesn’t cover the debt, the lender can call on your guarantee up to its limit, which can put your own home at risk. Guarantees can usually be released once enough of the loan is repaid, though that isn’t automatic, and you’ll need independent legal advice before you sign.

The right structure isn’t the same for every family. It depends on your retirement position, your other children, and your child’s relationship, which is exactly why a generic answer online can’t settle it.

This is the part most families skip, and the one that most often causes trouble later. Even among families who do put something in writing, Money.com.au found fewer than half spelled out whether the money was a gift or a loan, and only 39% covered what happens if the couple splits.

With nothing in writing, the law and the banks fill in the blanks for you, and not always the way you’d assume. A contribution you thought of as “a loan we’ll sort out later” can be treated as an outright gift. If your child separates from a partner, an undocumented contribution is the most exposed structure there is. And if you ever need the money back, an informal understanding can be very hard to prove, let alone enforce.

Most family arrangements go fine. The ones that don’t usually have the same thing in common: nobody wrote down what the money was, and everyone remembered it differently.

The agreement needs to be in place before the money moves. Trying to document it after settlement is harder, sometimes too late, and can look like an afterthought to a lender or a court. Courts tend to look more sceptically at paperwork created after the event, especially once a relationship is under strain, so it’s far easier done now, while everyone is on good terms.

Everything above is general. Your answer depends on things an article can’t see: how much you can spare without touching your retirement, how your child’s lender will read the arrangement, how settled their relationship is, and whether a brother or sister will want the same help in a few years. Those pieces connect. Change the structure and the lender’s view changes; change the amount and your retirement and your other children are in the picture.

A conversation with Fledge puts them on one table. It’s free and confidential, and we come back to you within 24 hours. We go through the whole picture with you:

• which structure fits what you’re trying to do: gift, loan, equity share or guarantee
• how your child’s lender is likely to treat it, and what it will want to see
• what needs to be in writing, and when it needs signing
• what happens to the money if your child’s relationship ends
• whether the amount sits comfortably with your own retirement
• how to keep things fair for your other children, now and in your will

You leave knowing what matters for your family, what to decide, and in what order, before any money moves. When you need a specialist, we introduce you to the right one: a family lawyer to draw up a loan agreement, a mortgage broker who knows how lenders treat family money, or an estate lawyer to bring your will into line.

It’s free because specialists may pay us a referral fee if you choose to work with them. That never costs you anything and never changes who we recommend. You don’t need paperwork or numbers ready, just a rough idea of what you’re planning.

Tell us what you’re planning→