Estate Planning Blog Articles

Estate & Business Planning Law Firm Serving the Providence & Cranston, RI Areas

What’s Is the Best Way to Give to Charity?

Charitable giving plays a valuable role in estate and tax planning. A well-planned donation can also provide a healthy income tax deduction, along with a reduction of estate taxes. Your generous donation could help to maintain financial security, exert control over assets during life and after death and provide for heirs, as explained in a recent article titled “Charitable giving good for heart, 1040” from the Valdosta Daily Times.

To accomplish any of these objectives, you’ll want to work with an experienced estate planning attorney who can help tailor an estate plan to your individual circumstances. Here are some strategies to consider.

Gifts of appreciated property might allow you to avoid capital gains tax owed when the asset is sold and, if planned properly, might allow you to receive an income tax deduction, usually worth the fair market value of the asset.

Removing any assets from your estate reduces the potential estate tax liability.

If you want to make a donation to a charity but you’d like to maintain some control over it, a Charitable Remainder Trust (CRT) might be a good fit. A CRT works best when funded by an appreciated asset, such as real estate or stock in a family owned business.

Once the property is transferred to the CRT, the CRT can sell the appreciated assets it holds without paying capital gains taxes. It then continues to provide income generated by the CRT to the beneficiaries for a period of time, as instructed by the CRT. At the end of this period, the remainder of the CRT is donated to the charity. You avoid capital gains on the assets you donated, an income stream and you also receive a tax deduction.

Another strategy is to use a Charitable Lead Trust or CLT. With a CLT, you give the charity the use of the asset and the right to any income generated for a predetermined time. When the time period ends, the asset reverts to you or is given to whoever you designate in the CLT. Appropriate assets for a CLT could be income-producing stocks and bonds, a valued collection or a painting transferred to a museum for a certain period of time.

You likely receive a current income tax deduction for the value to the charity. However, you receive no other direct benefit during the term. If a CLT is created upon your death, estate tax liability could be reduced.

Early tax planning can help make the most of any charitable giving opportunities and let you take full advantage of any additional benefits. Talk with an experienced estate planning attorney to receive guidance appropriate to your unique situation.

Reference: Valdosta Daily Times (Dec. 4, 2022)  “Charitable giving good for heart, 1040”

Your Cryptocurrency and NFTs Need to Be Included in Your Estate Plan

As more people continue to purchase cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), digital assets are becoming a bigger part of the investment world and of people’s estate plans. If you want to pass these assets to loved ones upon death, you’ll need to plan for it, says the article “Got Cryptocurrency or NFTs? They Need to Be in Your Estate Planfrom Kiplinger. Otherwise, securing, transferring and gifting crypto and NFTs can create unsolvable problems and lost assets.

There are many different kinds of crypto and NFTs, with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, Thether among them. An NFT is a unique, collectable, and tradable digital asset, like digital art or a photo. NFTs are purchased through a bidding process in this universe and in the metaverse, an online world where people are buying homes, real estate and more in the shape of NFTs. Sales of NFTs are estimated to have reached more than $17 billion in 2021. For better or worse, the future is here.

Cryptocurrency is accessed through a private key. This is a series of alphanumeric characters known only to the owner and stored in cold storage or a digital wallet. Whoever has possession of the key can buy, sell and spend the digital currency. If you have crypto, your family or fiduciary needs to know what you have, where to find the assets and what to do with them.

One option is to share the private key or place crypto assets and NFTs in custody, using a software application or a hardware wallet. There are a number of companies now offering these services. An old-school option for this new world asset is to create a secure spreadsheet of your digital assets and list the login protocols for each account.

For now, it is difficult to open crypto accounts and NFTs in the name of a revocable or irrevocable trust. However, digital wallets allowing you to open an account in the name of a trust do exist, if the company handling the digital asset permits. This is a very new, rapidly evolving asset class. Beneficiaries may not yet be named for crypto accounts. However, this may change in the future.

With no trust account and no named beneficiary, what happens to your crypto and NFTs when you die? For now, they must pass through your probate estate under the will. Your estate planning attorney will make sure your estate plan includes the correct way to give digital asset powers for the fiduciary handling your estate and include digital asset powers in your will, trust, and durable power of attorney.

If your state has adopted the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (UFADAA) or the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA)—46 states have—then it will be easier for loved ones to manage digital assets in case of incapacity or when you pass, as long as your estate plan addresses them.

Reference: Kiplinger (May 23, 2022) “Got Cryptocurrency or NFTs? They Need to Be in Your Estate Plan

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