My Personal Journey At age 66, I earned my Master of Estate Planning designation from the Institute of Certified Estate Planners. They taught me the theory, but my life experiences have given me something more valuable — the wisdom of real-world application. I am now in the process of achieving a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Texas. Marcie and I are now raising our 11-year-old grandson and loving every moment. But we also know the importance of being prepared, and that’s why I am passionate about helping families like yours build a plan that avoids probate, protects children, and keeps wealth in the family. Don’t put it off. A little planning today can save your family heartache, court battles, and thousands of dollars tomorrow. Life Insurance is a great tool to use for wealth replacement when giving to a charity. Life insurance has always been a key element in estate planning. Its primary uses have been to provide an “instant estate” for young families without accumulated wealth, to increase the total estate at a favorable cost, and to provide liquidity for estate taxes and other costs. In recent years, the greatest increase in the use of life insurance as part of philanthropic plans has been not to provide a direct gift to a charitable organization, but rather to provide death benefits for heirs, which replaces the asset values that have been given by other means to charitable organizations. In its simplest form, a significant outright charitable gift may produce enough income tax savings for the donor to purchase additional life insurance where death benefits equal the after-tax amount the heirs would have received had the asset been left in the estate. For a married couple, a two-life, second-to-die policy can offer the most coverage per premium dollar. When the donors’ estates are in the taxable range, ways to keep death benefits from the policy out of the estates should be considered. If one or
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