When practitioners and clients think of estate planning, several goals typically come to mind: (1) identifying family members and charitable organizations to whom or for whose benefit assets are to be given; (2) ensuring that assets intended for family members are preserved and protected from creditors, the government, bad influences, or even themselves; and (3) minimizing taxes while transferring wealth to lower generation family members. With regard to transferring wealth and minimizing taxes, “transfer taxes”— i.e., estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer (GST) taxes—are often thought of first. Income taxes, however, can often be minimized as well through careful planning, particularly with regard to structuring charitable gifts.

Most estate planning designed to transfer wealth while minimizing taxes is accomplished during a client’s lifetime, as opposed to planning at death through a will or other testamentary instrument. Further, a significant portion of this planning involves techniques that are sensitive to interest rate levels. Commonly used estate planning tools to transfer wealth that are interest rate sensitive include...

Originally published in Estate Planning (the "Journal"), Vol 42 / No 7 - July, 2015.