CRTs: Planning Options for Clients with Existing CRTs

Course Description: Charitable Remainder Trust (“CRT”) administration and planning. At its inception, a Charitable Remainder Trust (CRT) is a good fit for a client’s situation. But a CRT is an irrevocable trust—its terms cannot be changed—but investment performance and circumstances do change. CRTs usually span decades of a client’s life. Over time, this combination—an inflexible trust on one hand and a client’s changing life on the other—can lead to a misalignment between the client’s initial situation and the current status of the CRT. Surprisingly, many clients with CRTs are unaware that there are options available to them when such a misalignment exists, and advisors can both spot the misalignment, and present the potential fixes to the client.

We’ll discuss the range of options available to clients with CRTs – gift the income interest to charity, terminate/commute the CRT, sell the income interest to a third-party buyer, complete a CRT rollover. This program will review how to review a client’s CRT to determine which option, if any, is the best fit for the client. We’ll also present real-world case studies of completed transactions, discuss buyer and seller motivations, and provide a summary of the related tax/legal authorities.

If you have clients with CRTs, plan to create CRTs in the future, or are likely to come across prospective clients who have CRTs, you don’t want to miss this opportunity to learn more about the flexibility available to CRT beneficiaries.

Speakers: Evan Unzelman and Martin Shenkman, Esq.

Sponsor: Sterling Foundation Management