Can I give to a charity AND my family?

In short, yes! Many times people are concerned about how to make sure that their family members are taken care of but also ensure that they give back to a charity that means a lot to them. There are several ways you can do these types of gifts. This blog post is covering only basic gifts; there are other tools and subtrusts that you can use to do this too. Please contact me for a consultation to discuss your particular situation.

Percentages. You can gift via percentages to ensure that a charity (or several charities) get some amount of your assets. E.g. 75% to my children; 5% to X charity; 5% to Y charity; 15% to Z charity. This is a totally fine way to gift and ensure that your children get MOST of your assets — whatever is left. That could be $100 or $100,000 or $10,000,000. Either way, everyone gets something.

Percentages with dollar caps. You can gift via percentages and then cap the gift. If you have $100,000? 5% is $5,000; 15% is $15,000; which means that you have gifted $25,000 of your $100,000 to charities and your children will have $75,000.

But if you have $10,000,000 (10 million dollars), then 5% is $500,000; and 15% is $1,500,000 — a pretty substantial gift for a charity. Perhaps you want to limit that in case you do have $10 million. E.g. 5% up to $5,000 to X charity; 5% up to $5,000 to Y charity; and 15% up to $500,000 to Z charity; the rest to children (or whoever).

It works both ways — limiting gifts or ensuring gifts to charities or individuals.

Disaster Scenario gifts. If you have worked with me already, you know what I mean by “disaster scenario.” This is when you and all of your beneficiaries are gone. So let’s say you want to gift to your spouse, then to your kids, then to your grandkids…. but then the disaster is that your spouse, kids, and grandkids predecease you and you haven’t updated your estate plan in all that time. This is sometimes a place where people like to give the balance of their assets to charities — usually in percentages.

All this said, there are many ways to give charitable gifts through estate plans. It depends on what your goals are and the legacy you’d like to leave. Let’s talk. Contact me for a complimentary consultation.