Miller Johnson, the Western Michigan Estate Planning Council, the Western Michigan Planned Giving Group, and the Grand Rapids Community Foundation are excited to welcome Turney Berry to speak on April 20th at Miller Johnson’s office.

Mr. Berry will discuss helpful and interesting charitable planning strategies that may help families achieve their individual giving goals while also advancing their family estate planning objectives.  Audit proofing family gifts and sales, and estates, with charitable pour-over clauses and disclaimers provisions are hot topics for discussion, as are using gift annuities as charitable bequest substitutes and providing for the payment of estate income to obtain income tax deductions for non-taxable estates.

For many taxpayers, charitable distributions from irrevocable trusts are more efficient than income distributions to a beneficiary followed by a charitable contribution, and we will explore strategies to enable trusts to take those deductions.  With rising interest rates, another popular transaction is the gift of a remainder interest in a house or farm to charity, sometimes with a family buy-back of that interest.  The Biden Administration Green Book issued March 9 wants to eliminate back-loaded charitable lead annuity trusts, so they must be beneficial!  We’ll discuss whether they are, and how, as interest rates rise and fall.

Two other topics will round out the hour – using section 501(c)(4) organizations to avoid the private foundation rules, and transfers of minority interests to charity which can sometimes produce amazing results.