Making Gifts While Providing for Inheritances

Creating a “Temporary Foundation” Now,
While Benefiting Family Down the Road

• You can provide a regular source of gifts to the Jane Goodall Institute or other charitable interests that will begin immediately and continue for as long as you wish. 
• Such a gift can serve to reduce or eliminate income, estate, and gift taxes now and in future years as well. 
• Your gift can be part of a plan that helps ensure future economic security for you and your loved ones. 
• You may be able to provide your heirs with a larger inheritance than would otherwise be possible. 
• You can help children or grandchildren by making gifts to them at a later point in life when their need is greater or when they are more responsible and mature enough to better handle the gift. In many situations, delaying avoids making a gift to a child or grandchild at a stage in life when having too much money may harm their ambition, self-reliance, and independence.

There are other gift plans that feature annual income for you or others you choose. Under such plans, when income ceases, any remaining funds are transferred to the charity. Under the terms of a charitable lead trust, however, the charity receives its gift in the form of payments from the trust that begin immediately and last for a period of time you determine. At the end of that time period, assets remaining in the trust are usually given to now-adult children or grandchildren, although they can also be returned to you or other loved ones you designate. One result can be to provide an inheritance for loved ones at little or no after-tax cost. 

As you can see, the charitable lead trust can be an especially attractive way to meet multiple personal and charitable planning goals.

Replacing Gifts With Life Insurance

Life insurance can be used in many ways to help you make charitable gifts more effectively. One example is the use of life insurance to “replace” funds in your estate that have been given to the Jane Goodall Institute or other charities. The life insurance policy proceeds thus serve to provide an inheritance for heirs that might not otherwise be available.

For example, you might use the tax savings and all or a portion of the income generated by a charitable remainder trust or other gift plan to purchase life insurance benefiting your heirs. That way, the charity receives the gift you intend, while your heirs enjoy their inheritance—often at little cost to you or your heirs. Check with your life insurance professional or other advisors for additional information regarding this option.