Nice posting, Wendy. Thank you.

Another aspect of the charitable remainder trust is that you get an immediate tax deduction for the charitable contribution the charity expected to receive. The amount is based on actuarial tables, your life expectance, interest rates, and your payout rate.

These can be used in estate planning to reduce your estate tax rate or to write off some of your excess income if you have a high income tax rate.

I believe the ones adminstered by charities are the classics, the way written up in most of the estate planning books found in your local library. But I have seen ads from Fidelity that leads me to believe you can set one up with many mutual fund companies, where they invest your funds in their mutual funds and then administer the account to pay your benefits and to your selection of charities. This makes you dependent on the financial institution rather than the charity, and it gives you flexibility to split the funds among several charities and to designate alternate charities if one doesn't survive, etc.

I suppose in this sense the mutual fund company becomes like the traditional insurance company or bank trust department as adminstrator of the trust, but they do have a reputation for lower fees, and for being efficient in handling such duties.