Before telling you about a significant new development, here is a planned-giving history lesson. In the beginning. Charitable gifts to take effect at death were made by will (and most still are). Then came the charitable remainder trust created during lifetime, paying income to the donor (and/or others) for life (or a term of years) with remainder to charity.
Gifts of remaining CRT life interests. Some donors who have created charitable remainder trusts find that they no longer need the income. So they give their remaining life (or term-of-years) interests to the charitable-remainder organizations – thereby making the entire trust corpus immediately available to the charities. In the process, they get income tax charitable deductions for the current value of the surrendered interests (having previously received deductions for the remainder interests). You have got to know the ropes to get the desired income tax benefits and to avoid gift taxes.
