forms and ng-forms under ng-if directives do not get named field on $scope.

[RobiFerentz]

Not sure if this is intentional or not, but I have plenty of use cases where I need to create an entire form dynamically including the surrounding form or ng-form element/directive.
When I use ng-hide/ng-show, the $scope gets the usual 'nameoftheform' property on it.
That is however not the case when using ng-if.
In some cases, I MUST use ng-if so that the form (usually a nested ng-form) needs to be removed from the validation when it's not in view.

[Narretz]

This is because ng-if creates a new child scope, and if your form is simple like myForm, then this will not be set on the parent scope (because of prototypical inheritance). A workaround for this is to handle form names like ng-models - always make them object properties, like obj.myForm, where obj is defined on your controller. This works because angular handles form names not as names, but rather as paths / expressions.
But I agree that this is unintuitive. I'd prefer ng-if to not create a child scope, but I don't know if this is possible.

[lgalfaso]

The link is slightly out-of-date, but will help you understand scopes and why this is not an issue
https://github.com/angular/angular.js/wiki/Understanding-Scopes