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April 28, 2010 at 08:00 PM
Okay, I confess: I’ve had a 32-year love affair with cash value life insurance. It is, in my view, the single most dynamic financial tool ever offered to the American consumer. But I’ve never been as excited about the technique as when I use it in my charitable leverage strategy.
For philanthropically minded clients, a properly designed cash value life insurance policy (CVLI) married to a charitable remainder trust (CRT) can generate powerful and meaningful results. But here’s the twist: Most financial advisors I talk to focus on the traditional, estate planning use of the CRT and insurance–the two-life unitrust with life insurance in the role of wealth replacement. In my version, the paradigm changes from an estate planning tool to a retirement planning one. 
Let’s establish what I mean by the word “leverage.” I do not use it in the financial sense; there are no loans or premium financing involved. Rather, I use it in the physical sense. If you understand how a screwdriver works, you’ll grasp this program.
If you turn a screw with your fingers, you’ll only get so far. Use the simple lever of a screwdriver and you achieve exceptional results. In a charitably leveraged strategy, the lever is the CRT and the object it acts upon–the screw–is the CVLI policy. Like the physical leverage example, the results are remarkable.
The lever
A key element to the success of this strategy is to keep it simple, and CRTs are not. However, when we use a “term of years” charitable remainder annuity trust (CRAT) we can remove a lot of the moving parts. I like to use a 10-year CRAT with an 8% fixed annuity distribution.
Use of a term of years trust eliminates a “tax-deduction based on age” calculation, while the fixed annuity eliminates guessing on the income stream. Everyone at any age will get the same tax deduction and receive the same amount of income over the same length of time. How’s that for simple?
For example, a $500,000 deposit to the CRAT above will generate a $170,000 charitable income tax deduction in the first year (assuming a 4% applicable federal rate or AFR), and pay out $40,000 each year for 10 years ($400,000 total). At the end of the 10th year, whatever remains in the CRAT is distributed to the donor’s favorite charities or a donor advised fund. If the investments earn 5% annually over the 10 years, while distributing $40,000 per year, the CRAT would have a remaining balance of about $311,000 that would be given to charity at the end of the term.
The object
I stated earlier that I loved a good CVLI policy. What I really love about it is the living benefits it provides while wrapped in the security of a pre-retirement death benefit. In our charitably leveraged strategy, I reduce the death benefit to the Technical and Miscellaneous Revenue Act of 1988 (TAMRA) guidelines, plus cash value minimum during the “accumulation phase,” which is the time between year 1 and the first year of desired deferred income. This design will achieve the greatest amount of cash value growth.
I use an equity-indexed universal life or variable universal life policy because the owner will be attracted to returns linked to market conditions. However, a growth-oriented whole life policy will work just fine. The only must is the inclusion of an “over-loan” or similarly named lapse prevention feature, since we will be drawing down the cash value in the “retirement” years and we want to avoid a taxable event created by a policy lapse.
For example, listed below are the projected results for a male age 45 preferred non-smoker, who pays $40,000 annual premium for 10 years to an equity-indexed UL policy from a top-rated carrier, assuming a 6% gross return:
? The initial death benefit would be $874,000 plus cash value;
? $60,000 annual cash-flow from the policy from age 66 to 85 (20 years);
? $1,200,000 total cash-flow from the policy; and
? $349,000 in remaining death benefit at age 86.
Obviously, these projections are for educational purposes only and are not guaranteed. A change in the assumptions will alter the outcome.
The combination
Charitable leverage is created when the donor writes a single check or makes a single transfer of appreciated stock to the CRAT and then relaxes while the vehicle does all the heavy lifting.
