What are they?
A charitable lead trust (CLT) enables your client to make significant charitable gifts now while transferring substantial assets to beneficiaries later. It works like this: A trust is set up from which MCF receives annual payments for one’s life or for a specified number of years. These funds may be distributed to charities your client specifies or be added to a donor-advised fund. When the trust terminates, the trust principal is returned to your client or distributed to their children or others they may designate. The trust assets pass to the recipients at reduced tax cost, sometimes even tax-free.

Highlights

• A CLT shelters investment earnings from tax, and it offers gift, estate, and generation-skipping tax benefits. For example, trust assets are removed from your client’s estate for estate tax purposes.
  
  
• Your client can establish a CLT during their lifetime or through their will.
  
  
• They can choose to have either a fixed percentage of the trust assets or a set dollar amount distributed to their fund at MCF.
  
  
• The fund can continue to grow and support their community even after the trust terminates.
  
  
• A charitable lead trust may appeal to those who want to reduce their estate tax or who want to delay their heirs' receipt of an inheritance.

For more information about how MCF can partner with you to serve your clients, contact Elizabeth Marlowe, vice president for Philanthropic Services, at 415.464.2517 or by e-mail; or Aviva Shiff Boedecker, director of gift planning, at 415.464.2516 or by e-mail. Or request a copy of You Have a Partner: An Introduction to the Marin Community Foundation for Professional Advisors. This guide provides an overview of the many ways we work with advisors to help them meet their clients' charitable needs.