How to Give an Inheritance While You're Alive
Baby boomers are expected to transfer more than $50 trillion in wealth during the next 20 years, with much of it going to Gen X and millennial children. But many don’t want to wait until they die to help their heirs and charities. Billionaires can give away most of their wealth without worrying about how they’ll pay the bills during the final years of their lives. However, boomers who don’t own yachts but have succeeded in building a good-sized retirement nest egg face a more difficult calculation. Many want to provide financial assistance to family members and their favorite charities but worry about jeopardizing their retirement security, particularly when it comes to paying for long-term care.
More than half of 65-year-old Americans will need long-term-care services of some kind, according to research by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and one in five will develop a disability that will require care for more than five years. At the same time, only 8% of Americans have long-term-care insurance, so most seniors will have to rely on their savings and government assistance to pay for long-term care. (To estimate the cost of care in your area, go to www.genworth.com/aging-and-you/finances/cost-of-care.)
The easiest solution to this dilemma is to postpone gifts to family members and charities until you die, when you’ll no longer need funds for living expenses or long-term care. That’s the default option for many retirees: More than 60% of Americans say they plan to transfer their wealth when they die, according to a survey by RBC Wealth Management.
But holding on to your wealth until you draw your last breath has its downsides, too. There’s a good chance you or your spouse will live into your nineties, which means your children will probably be in their sixties, or even seventies, when you die. That’s a long time to wait if they need money for a down payment on a home or are struggling to repay their student loans.
“Providing for heirs after life is wonderful, but if you help them while you are living, you get to see how your support impacts them,” says Abrin Berkemeyer, a certified financial planner with Goodman Financial in Houston. “This also applies to those who want to give to charity, as you can follow the work of the organization you are financially supporting.”
Financial planners say that including “giving while living” in your estate plan provides a way to assist children and grandchildren in reaching important goals, such as paying for college and buying a house, while allowing you to gauge how they’ll manage their inheritance. Where charities are concerned, making significant donations while you’re alive can help you to determine whether your money is being used wisely — and provide some valuable tax benefits as well.
Creating guardrails
Before you start writing checks to your kids or your favorite charity, it’s important to figure out how much you can afford to give away. That requires more intentional planning than simply spending what you need in retirement and leaving the rest in your estate.
One strategy is to create a timeline of your income and expenses in retirement, which will help you determine how much you need to withdraw from your savings each year to pay for any expenses that you can’t cover with Social Security benefits (if you’ve filed for them), pension payments and other sources of income.
This exercise allows you to make adjustments as your circumstances change — once you’ve paid off your mortgage, for example. It will also help you get an idea of how much you can afford to give away. You may need professional guidance to get the most out of this strategy, because you’ll need to project your investment returns as well as taxes you’ll owe.
Factors to consider when estimating how much you’ll need for long-term care include your health, family medical history, marital status (single people are more likely to require care in a nursing home than married seniors) and other sources of funds, such as traditional long-term-care insurance or a life insurance policy that has a long-term-care component.
Home equity should also be part of the equation. Seniors held more than $13 trillion in home equity in the first quarter of 2024, according to the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association. Seniors often use proceeds from the sale of their homes to pay for care in an assisted-living facility or nursing home. If you prefer to age in place, you may be able to use a reverse mortgage to pay for in-home care.
Creating a source of guaranteed income that ensures you’ll have funds coming in no matter how long you live could make it easier to give away money while you’re still alive.
Many retirees don’t have a traditional pension, but you can create a do-it-yourself pension by annuitizing a portion of your nest egg. The most straightforward annuity is a single premium immediate annuity, or SPIA. With this annuity, you give an insurance company a lump sum in exchange for a regular payment — usually monthly — for the rest of your life (or, in the case of a joint-and-survivor annuity, as long as the surviving spouse lives) or for a specific period.
Helping the next generation
A financial gift could make a huge difference in your children’s lives, enabling them to buy a home, pay off debts or adopt a child. Making these gifts will also shrink the size of your estate, reducing the risk that it will be subject to federal or state estate taxes.
But even if you think you can afford a large contribution, consider starting small, says Thomas Brandt, a financial adviser with RBC Wealth Management. By making modest annual gifts, you can assess how your children are using the money, which will help you decide how much to give going forward. If you’re not comfortable with the way they manage the money, you may want to consider setting up a trust in your estate that protects how your assets are distributed.
In 2024, you can give up to $18,000 per person to as many individuals as you want without filing a gift tax return (together, married couples can give up to $36,000 to as many people as they want). Gifts that exceed the limit, which is adjusted every year to account for inflation, must be disclosed on IRS Form 709. The amount will be applied against your lifetime exclusion from estate taxes.
The current federal lifetime estate tax exclusion is $13.61 million, or $27.22 million for a married couple. So even if you give away more than the annual limit, it’s unlikely your estate will be subject to federal estate taxes, Berkemeyer says. If, say, you want to help a child put a large down payment on a home, making a gift that exceeds the yearly cap may be worthwhile.
Still, staying within the annual limits when possible is a prudent strategy. If the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act isn’t extended when it expires at the end of 2025, the federal estate tax exemption will decline to about $7 million, or $14 million for a married couple. These gifts will also reduce the risk that you’ll have to pay state estate or inheritance taxes if you live in one of the 18 states, plus Washington, D.C., that impose them. Oregon, for example, taxes estates that exceed $1 million.
If you want to be more generous but you’re worried about state and federal estate taxes, there are tax-efficient strategies you can use to increase your gifts. Paying tuition bills for a grandchild (or anyone else) won’t count toward the annual exclusion as long as you make payments directly to the educational institution, and this exception applies to preschool through graduate school. Likewise, if you pay the bills for someone’s medical care directly to the health care provider, the money won’t count toward your annual exclusion.
Another strategy is to take advantage of a special provision that allows you to front-load contributions to a 529 college-savings plan for a grandchild (or anyone else you want to help save for college). You can contribute five years’ worth of the annual gift exclusion in one year without filing a gift tax return. In 2024, that means you can fund a 529 with up to $90,000 per beneficiary, or $180,000 if you’re married.
If you make the maximum contribution within those limits, any additional gifts to the individual during the five-year period would count against your lifetime gift tax exemption. But front-loading contributions will give the funds invested more time to compound and grow, creating an even greater pot of money for the beneficiary’s education.
Doing well by doing good
Naming your favorite charities as beneficiaries in your will or trust is one way to fulfill your philanthropic goals, but you won’t be able to see the impact of your contributions — or redirect them if you’re not satisfied with how your money has been used. Plus, making charitable contributions while you’re alive could deliver some valuable tax benefits.
Some strategies to consider:
Qualified charitable distributions. Qualified charitable distributions provide a way to help charities while you’re still alive while lowering taxes on required minimum distributions from your IRA. A QCD is a direct transfer from your IRA to a qualified charity (or to multiple charities). You can make a QCD as early as age 70½, but when you reach the age at which you’re required to start taking distributions — currently 73 — the charitable distribution will count toward your RMD.
Although a QCD isn’t deductible, it will reduce your adjusted gross income, which could lower taxes on your Social Security benefits and enable you to avoid the high-income surcharge on Medicare Part B premiums. In 2024, you can donate up to $105,000 directly from your IRA to a qualified charity.
Donor-advised funds. If you sell appreciated securities and give the proceeds to charity, you’ll have to pay capital gains tax, typically at long-term rates of 15% or 20%. A more tax-efficient option is contributing the securities to a donor-advised fund.
These funds, offered by most major financial-services firms, allow you to donate cash, securities or other assets to an investment account and decide later how to distribute the funds to charity. Even if you don’t itemize deductions on your tax return, donating an appreciated asset to a donor-advised fund provides a tax benefit because you don’t have to pay taxes on capital gains you’ve accumulated.
Charitable gift annuities. A charitable gift annuity is a contract between you and a charity. You can donate cash, securities or other assets to the charity and get a charitable tax deduction up front. The institution invests the money and returns some of it to you — and up to one beneficiary, such as a family member, if you wish — in fixed monthly payments for the rest of your life. Any funds remaining after you die will go to the charity.
Retirees who are 70½ or older have the option of making a one-time donation of up to $50,000 from their traditional IRAs to a charitable gift annuity. In that case, the donation isn’t tax-deductible, but the distribution will be excluded from taxable income. If you’ve reached the age at which you’re required to take minimum distributions from your IRA, the contribution counts toward that RMD, which would otherwise be taxed as ordinary income.
Because of the significant financial obligations required, charitable gift annuities are typically offered by sizable, well-funded organizations–colleges and universities, for example, and large national charities, such as the American Cancer Society. As is the case with donor-advised funds, some charitable gift annuities can accept non-cash assets, such as appreciated securities or even real estate, says Johnne Syverson, vice president of gift annuity services for the National Gift Annuity Foundation, which provides services to charities that want to offer the annuities.
Because the charity will receive the main portion of your contribution after you die, you won’t be around to see the impact of your donation. Still, the guaranteed income you receive from a charitable gift annuity could make it easier for you to contribute to charity in other ways or make gifts to family members. And unlike donations included in your estate, contributions to a charitable gift annuity provide a tax break while you’re alive.
Original Article: https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/estate-planning/how-to-give-an-inheritance-while-youre-alive
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