Crummey Trust

Estate planners often worry about minimizing or avoiding estate taxation at death, but gift taxation must be considered when making transfers during lifetime. Smaller gifts can avoid gift taxation due to the gift tax annual exclusion, which…

With the estate, gift and GST exemption at nearly $11.5 million and scheduled to grow until 2026 when they will be cut in half, few advisers are focusing on wealth transfer tax planning for their clients.

As a general rule, a trust is a taxpayer separate and independent of its grantor and its beneficiaries and is taxed in the same manner as an individual. There are, however, certain special rules and limitations to this taxing regime. One…

The IRS has just issued PLR 200949012. Although it may not, under Code Sec. 6110(k)(3) of the Code, be cited or used as precedent, it appears correctly to conclude that a trust someone else created for its beneficiary remains a “defective”…

In this article, we discuss a concept called the "ExtraCrummeyTrust(sm)", a new, separate form of trust being introduced in Wealth Transfer Planning for 2007. It is a variation of the Crummey Trust, one of the most widely used vehicles in…

Unless falling under an exception, exclusion or special rule, a generation-skipping transfer tax is imposed by Code Sec. §2601 whenever property is transferred through or around one younger generation (such as the generation of the…

Mrs. Chawla, the wife of Harold Geisinger’s physician, initially attempted to acquire and be the beneficiary of a policy on Mr. Geisinger’s life. Apparently lacking an “insurable interest” in his life, Transamerica refused to issue the…

Powers to withdraw property from a trust which ultimately lapse, sometimes generically referred to as "Crummey powers," are a mainstay in estate planning. Their use can have far-reaching property as well as estate, gift and…