Do Charitable Trusts Help with Estate Planning?
Simply put, a charitable trust holds assets and distributes assets to charitable organizations. The person who creates the trust, the grantor, decides how the trust will manage and invest assets, as well as how and when donations are made, as described in the article “How a Charitable Trust Works” from yahoo! finance. An experienced estate planning attorney can help you create a charitable trust to achieve your estate planning goals and create tax-savings opportunities.
Any trust is a legal entity, legally separate from you, even if you are the grantor and a trustee. The trust owns its assets, pays taxes and requires management. The charitable trust is created with the specific goal of charitable giving, during and after your lifetime. Many people use charitable trusts to create ongoing gifts, since this type of trust grows and continues to make donations over extended periods of time.
Sometimes charitable trusts are used to manage real estate or other types of property. Let’s say you have a home you’d like to see used as a community resource after you die. A charitable trust would be set up and the home placed in it. Upon your death, the home would transfer to the charitable organization you’ve named in the trust. The terms of the trust will direct how the home is to be used. Bear in mind while this is possible, most charities prefer to receive cash or stock assets, rather than real estate.
The IRS defines a charitable trust as a non-exempt trust, where all of the unexpired interests are dedicated to one or more charitable purposes, and for which a charitable contribution deduction is allowed under a specific section of the Internal Revenue Code. The charitable trust is treated like a private foundation, unless it meets the requirements for one of the exclusions making it a public charity.
To answer the question, “Do charitable trusts help with estate planning?”, consider that there are two main kinds of charitable trusts. One is a Charitable Remainder Trust, used mostly to make distributions to the grantor or other beneficiaries. After distributions are made, any remaining funds are donated to charity. The CRT may distribute its principal, income, or both. You could also set up a CRT to invest and manage money and distribute only earnings from the investments. A CRT can also be set up to distribute all holdings over time, eventually emptying all accounts. The CRT is typically used to distribute proceeds of investments to named beneficiaries, then distribute its principal to charity after a certain number of years.
The Charitable Lead Trust (CLT) distributes assets to charity for a defined amount of time, and at the end of the term, any remaining assets are distributed to beneficiaries. The grantor may be included as one of the trust’s beneficiaries, known as a “Reversionary Trust.”
All Charitable Trusts are irrevocable, so assets may not be taken back by the grantor. To qualify, the trust may only donate to charities recognized by the IRS.
Donations to charity during life typically have a more favorable impact for tax purposes, because you could be allowed a income tax deduction on your income tax return for the year of the gift. Plus, the donation removes the property from your taxable estate. This is a two-fer for tax planning purposes. If you have a taxable estate, a gift made in a will at death can be deducted on your estate tax return only.
An estate planning attorney will know how to structure the charitable trust to maximize its tax-savings potential. Depending upon how it is structured, a CT can also impact capital gains taxes.
BOOK A CALL with me, Ted Vicknair, Board Certified Estate Planning and Administration Specialist, Board Certified Tax Law Specialist, and CPA to learn more about estate planning, incapacity planning, and asset protection.
If you liked this article, “Do Charitable Trusts Help with Estate Planning?” read these additional articles: What Power Does an Executor Have? and Can a Nasal Spray Prevent Dementia? and Should I Use a Corporate Trustee? and What a Will Can and Cannot Do and Does Louisiana Have an Inheritance Tax?
Reference: yahoo! finance (Dec. 16, 2021) “How a Charitable Trust Works”
