Can I buy a share in my wife's house without paying stamp duty?

[Robo79]

Hi, I am after a little advice. My wife has a house from her first marriage that is in her name, worth around two hundred thousand. There is a forty two thousand pounds outstanding mortgage on it in her name. I have some money sitting in a bank account earning next to nothing and would like to buy the outstanding mortgage part of the house. (Transfer the money to my wife, so she can pay her mortgage off.)
The advice we would like to know is:
1. Can I register my share of the house with Land register without a solicitor?
2. If so would I have to pay stamp duty on the full market value or just the forty two thousand?
3. Do you know how much stamp duty I would have to pay?
4. Does anyone know the Land register form that we would need to fill in?
5. Would my wife have to pay tax on the money? I read somewhere that, there is no tax to pay on gifts between spouses. Am I right on this?

As you can see, we are total novices at all this sort of thing, and don’t know what the best way to go about it. So any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Kind regards

[Feedback]

Transferring from one spouse to the other as a gift is normally exempt from SDLT

[maths]

No SDLT charge arises if you purchase an interest for less than £40,000.

Say house worth £400,000 and mortgage is 42,000. Wife's equity therefore 358,000.

You pay wife 40,000 for a 10% beneficial interest. Wife as legal owner declares she henceforth holds the legal title as to 90% beneficially her and 10% you with wife agreeing to indemnify you against any liability with respect to the 42k mortgage.

[AGoodman]

Your interest can be shown in a declaration of trust, which is a private document and the legal (registered) title to the property stays in your wife's sole name. This is fine provided you don't lose the DoT. You can also protect your interest by filing a form RX1 to create standard restriction in form B.

You could do it yourself but I would recommend getting a professional to prepare the declaration of trust and (if you want) file a restriction.

There is no need to put the property into joint names on the Land Register.

Also - a pedantic point of order - you should transfer £39,999 at most. The exemption from tax and (more importantly) filing a return is transactions "less than" £40,000.