COURSE DESCRIPTION
In formulating their trust and estate plans, clients often want to set up benchmarks of achievement before distributions or gifts are made. These benchmarks often involve educational attainment – i.e., that a child obtain a college degree by a certain. But they may involve more difficult to measure benchmarks or life goals that are arguably not appropriate – i.e., that a child marry or have children of their own by a certain age. Conditional gifts can easily lead to resentments among beneficiaries, questionable enforceability, disputes, and fiduciary litigation. This program will provide you with a practical guide to conditional gifting using incentive trusts and other mechanisms, and counseling clients about the real limits and risks of conditional gifting.
- Conditional gifting using incentive trusts and other mechanisms
- Establishing objectively measurable conditions for gifts or distributions
- Types of conditions or benchmarks – education, life goals, etc.
- What’s enforceable, what’s not – counseling clients about limits
- Choosing the right fiduciaries to administer conditional gifts/incentive trusts
Speaker:
Missia H. Vaselaney is a partner in the Cleveland office of Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, LLP, where her practice focuses on estate planning for individuals and businesses. She also represents clients before federal and state taxing authorities. Ms. Vaselaney is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and has been a member of the Steering Committee for AICPA’s National Advanced Estate Planning Conference since 2001.