Is Charitable Giving Part of Your Estate Plan?

Charitable giving can be a powerful and meaningful way to make a positive impact on the world. Plus, it can also be a valuable element of an estate plan.

By including charitable gifts in your estate plan, you can help ensure that your values and priorities are reflected in the distribution of some of your assets after your death. Let’s look at a few things to consider when thinking about charitable giving in an estate plan.

Identify Your Charitable Goals

What causes or organizations are important to you? Do you want to support specific programs or initiatives, or do you want to make a more general contribution to a particular cause? By considering your charitable goals, you can identify the organizations that are most closely aligned with your values and priorities.

How Will You Go About It?

There are several options for making charitable gifts as part of an estate plan. You can make a direct gift to a charitable organization through the terms of a will or a living trust. A charitable trust is another option that can be right for some people.

Donor advised funds are another possibility. With this approach, you make a single contribution to the fund, and can make recommendations with regard to the charities you want to support. In this matter, you can provide for multiple charities in a streamlined manner. Since all of the participants share the administrative costs, more money gets into the hands of the charities.

A charitable foundation is yet another option. You don’t necessarily have to be a billionaire to establish a foundation. In fact, most of the foundations in the United States are funded with less than $1 million.

Tax Benefits

Charitable gifts can provide tax benefits to your estate and your heirs. For example, charitable donations may be tax-deductible, which can reduce the overall tax burden on your estate.

Additionally, charitable gifts may also be eligible for an estate tax charitable deduction, which can further reduce the tax burden on your estate. The estate tax is a factor for high net worth individuals with estates that exceed $12.92 million in value.

Distribution Details

When you include charitable gifts in your estate plan, it’s important to consider how those gifts will be distributed along with your other assets. You may want to work with an estate planning attorney to ensure that your charitable gifts are distributed in a way that aligns with your overall goals and objectives.

Regular Plan Updates

Your charitable goals and priorities may change over time. Therefore, it is important to review and update your estate plan regularly to ensure that it reflects your current wishes. This may involve making changes to your will or charitable trusts, or adding new provisions to your estate plan.

Access Our Estate Planning Worksheet

After speaking with countless clients over the years, we have a good understanding of the questions people have and the mistakes that are sometimes made. With this in mind, we decided to create a worksheet that people can go through to gain valuable insight.

You will definitely come away with a better understanding of the process if you take the time to go through it. To get your copy, click this link and follow the simple instructions when you reach our worksheet access page.

Need Help Now?

Learning is great, but at some point, it is time for direct action. If you are ready to work with in Oklahoma City estate planning lawyer to develop your plan, we are here to help. You can send us a message to request a consultation appointment, or we can be reached by phone at 405-843-6100. We also have a Tulsa location, and that office can be reached at 918-615-2700.

After helping his own family deal with a lengthy probate and the IRS following his father’s untimely death in a farm accident, Larry Parman made a decision to help families create effective estate plans designed to reduce taxes, minimize legal interference with the transfer of assets to one’s heirs, and protect his clients’ assets from predators and creditors.

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