Tower Hill School OG-1

Planning a Gift of Real Estate, Retirement Assets, or Life Insurance

I. Real Estate Real estate is an ideal vehicle through which to make a meaningful gift to Tower Hill School. There are several ways that you can accomplish this kind of gift:

A retained life estate (or life tenancy) enables you to make a gift of your real property to Tower Hill School while you continue to live there, until such time as the property is sold.

Granting Tower Hill School fractional interest in your real property represents a means of offsetting (completely eliminating, in some cases) the capital gains tax when selling that property.

The sale of your real property can fund either a charitable remainder trust or a charitable lead trust.

II. Retirement Assets Retirement account assets, if left to anyone other than a spouse, may be subject to very high taxation, potentially leaving only 25 cents on the dollar. However, by designating Tower Hill School as recipient of any benefits remaining in your retirement plan, you may effectively reduce the taxes on those assets. There are several ways to make a gift of these retirement assets to Tower Hill School:

Name Tower Hill School as the primary or secondary beneficiary of your retirement plan by contacting your plan administrator and completing a new beneficiary form.

Take structured withdrawals from your retirement plan, beginning at age 59 ½ or 70 ½ and make outright gifts to Tower Hill School that produce a charitable deduction.

Set up a Charitable Remainder Trust in your will into which you transfer any residual funds in your retirement plan at your death, naming your surviving spouse or children as income beneficiaries for life or for a term of years and Tower Hill School as the charitable remainder “person.”

Under any of these arrangements, Tower Hill School will receive a full dollar for every dollar remaining in your retirement account. III. Life Insurance Often overlooked as a gift, life insurance can be flexible, private and confidential, workable into an annual or lifetime budget, and tax deductible for income and/or estate tax purposes. Gifts of life insurance are relatively easy to make. There is no gift tax, and the donor’s estate will not be taxed on the value of the policy because it is payable to a qualified charity. The aforementioned estate planning ideas, descriptions, and illustrations are provided as an educational service and should not be interpreted as financial or legal advice. Please consult your own financial and legal advisors for the plans and instruments most appropriate to your particular circumstances.