Monday, June 22, 2009

The Advantages of a Charitable Remainder Unitrust

By Hank Brock

A Charitable Remainder Unitrust (CRUT) was created to provide an income to a non-charitable beneficiary while simultaneously transferring the remainder interest to a qualified charity.

The donor would irrevocably transfer securities or property to a trustee. In return, the trustee would provide the donor (or other beneficiary) income from the property for life.

The donor could also provide that if he or she predeceased a spouse, the spouse in turn would receive income from the donated property for life. The donor would receive payments based on a fixed percentage of the fair market value of the assets placed in trust. The assets would be revalued each year.

Additional Contributions

Unlike the Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust (CRAT), however, the CRUT may continue to receive assets in later years. The CRUT also differs from a CRAT since the stream paid out by the CRUT trust must be at least 5% of the annual reappraised value of the corpus.

Consequently the CRUT, depending on the reappraised value of the corpus and accumulated income, can allocate greater or lesser amounts of income while the CRAT pays a set sum of income that never fluctuates in amount.

Appreciation

If the value of the corpus and income continues to appreciate, the amount of the payment to the non-charitable beneficiary may increase with each succeeding year. This makes the CRUT an effective means of fighting inflation. If, however, the value of the assets continues to depreciate over a period of years, the CRUT may actually pay less income to the non-charitable beneficiary than was originally intended.

A grantor should fund the corpus of a trust with assets that pay a guaranteed rate of return if the grantor wants to ensure a yearly increase in the value of the income payment to the non-charitable beneficiary. - 23309

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