The joint ownership of a current account is not sufficient to prove an indirect gift

Abstract

With order No. 12107/2026, the Italian Supreme Court addresses the issue of whether an indirect gift can be established in the case of jointly held bank accounts. The Court clarifies that the mere joint ownership of the account and the awareness of money transfers are not sufficient to prove animus donandi (the intention to make a gift). Instead, a rigorous assessment of the donative intent based on unequivocal circumstances is required.

The case

The dispute originated from an action brought by the heirs of a woman against the heirs of the individual who had managed the deceased’s movable assets through current accounts and asset management relationships held at a bank.

The claimants requested the restitution of the transfers made by the manager, arguing that he had unlawfully appropriated the deceased’s funds by gradually liquidating the amounts deposited in the current account and transferring over five hundred thousand euros to his personal accounts and to those of his daughter.

However, the Court of Siena dismissed the claim for restitution, holding that the joint ownership of the current account established by the deceased constituted an indirect gift. The Court of Appeal of Florence upheld this decision.

The woman’s heirs then appealed to the Supreme Court, contesting the inadequate assessment of the animus donandi.

The ruling

The Supreme Court found the grounds relating to the lack of proof of donative intent to be well founded.

The Court reiterated the principle that the joint ownership of a current account with separate signature authority may constitute an indirect gift when the funds belong to only one of the account holders and the operation is intended to gratuitously enrich the other party. However, since joint ownership may serve different purposes, a rigorous assessment of animus donandi is required.

In the present case, the judges had inferred the intention to make a gift from the account holder’s awareness of the transfers made by the manager. According to the Supreme Court, however, this element is not sufficient, especially considering that such awareness is justified by the fiduciary relationship between the deceased and the manager of her assets.

Furthermore, the Court held that the very existence of such a fiduciary relationship in asset management is incompatible with automatically classifying the transactions as acts of liberality.

The contested judgment was therefore quashed, and the case remanded to the Court of Appeal of Florence.

Observations

The decision confirms that an indirect gift may occur in relation to jointly held bank accounts but strongly reiterates the need for a rigorous verification of the animus donandi.

The most significant aspect of the ruling is the rejection of automatic evidentiary presumptions. The Supreme Court explicitly excludes that the mere joint ownership of the account and the account holder’s awareness of the transfers carried out by the other party can, in themselves, prove the existence of a gift.

Instead, the decision emphasizes the overall context of the relationship between the parties. In this case, the existence of a fiduciary asset management relationship made it plausible that the joint ownership served operational purposes rather than an intention of gratuitous enrichment.

The order thus confirms that, in matters of indirect gifts, establishing animus donandi requires clear and consistent evidence and cannot be based on purely formal indicators or presumptions lacking adequate support in the actual course of the relationship between the parties.