Gift tax filing question-Help

[Art]

Husband & wife have jointly owned real property (home and farm land) in which they are retaining a life estate and gifting remainder interest to son and daughter. Wife also had 50% interest in separate farm land with her son. She will also retain a life estate and gift remainder interest in that property to her son and daughter.

In additon husband and wife made cash gifts to both children totaling $70,000.

All of these gifts were made in April 2011.

Question: How do you report the gifts ? Normally for jointly held property (husdand & wife) they would elect to split the cash gifts to maximize the use of the annual exclusion.

Since we have both cash gifts and gifts of future interest, do you file a split gift return(s) for the cash and the joinlty held real estate and then a second separate return for the wife only gifting her 50% in the separately held property to her son and daughter ?

[AJsTax]

Several pieces to the puzzle

TTB pg 21-26 covers this pretty well.
The gift of a remainder interest is considered a completed gift in MOST states; what in the law in your state?
All gifts by spouses in a year are considered as given by each if they agree to gift splitting.
Your example has three different cases to cover, the cash, the property owned by the spouse and the property own jointly and remainder gifted.
There is no joint gift tax return allowed anymore.

[Art]

My clients are IL residents and yes these are considered completed gifts.

I apologize if I did not make clear my question. I know that each spouse files their own return. My qestion concerned the mechanics of filing the wife's return. Could she include her share of the gifts of property held jointly with her husband and her share of the gifts of property she held joinlty with her son on one return or should she file a second return to report the gift of property she held jointly with her son ?