Charitable Estate Planning

What is an Estate?
Your estate includes all of the tangible and intangible property that you own.  Tangible personal property includes those things that are material in nature, like cash, stock, jewelry, antiques, automobiles, boats, planes, land, clothing, art , animals and etc.  Intangible personal property includes: patents, copyrights, mineral rights, easements, royalties and etc.

What is Estate Planing?
Estate planning is simply the process of determining and expressing the methods of arranging or re-arranging your property in order to accomplish your objectives.  Your estate plan tells society what you want to do with the assets that were entrusted to you during your lifetime and at the time of your death.

Three key elements in estate planning are creation, preservation and distribution.  We spend our enitre lifetime, thanks to the grace of God, creating our estate.  We spend many hours preserving that estate through good investing and prudent planing.  However, many do not spend enough time on the third key element....the proper distribution of our assets during our lifetime and at the time of our death.

Charitable Giving Through Your Estate Plan
You can effectively manage and distribute your estate by taking advantage of charitable giving.  Charitable giving is nothing more than giving back to God and those in need some of that which God entrusted to us during our lifetime.  The Christian Steward makes an order disposition of his or her worldly possessions at the time of one's death.  Hence, the good steward has a prudent estate plan in place.

Ways to Give Through Your Estate Plan (Planned Gift)

Gifts By Will
 - Specific Bequest
 - Residuary Bequest
 - Contingent Bequest
 - Charitable Remainder Bequest

Life Income Gifts
 - Gift Annuity
 - Deferred Gift Annuity Trust
 - Charitable Remainder Unitrust
 - Charitable Remainder Lead Trusts
 - Gifts of Personal Residence or Farm
 - Gifts of Life Insurance

For more information on how to donate to Catholic Charities through a planned gift, please contact Pat Palombo, Office of Development & Stewardship, at (330) 744-8451