Charitable gift made during a person’s lifetime can serve as a valuable estate planning technique that offers three important tax benefits.

Estate planning is a very important part of planning for the future of a person’s family. When it comes to estate planning, three key documents are the last will and testament, the living will, and the health care proxy.

How individuals can plan philanthropic activities so that they can help their favorite charities, while maximizing the advantages of their philanthropy – from an estate- and tax- planning perspective – for themselves.

The affluent have always had access to strategies designed to help them pass money to their heirs with minimal tax obligations. One of the most common estate tax planning strategies is an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT). An ILIT is easy to understand, relatively easy to implement, and in many situations, avoids the need to incorporate other wealth transfer or estate tax reduction techniques.