Welcome to Champions for Law Enforcement!
We are a subsidiary of Law Enforcement Life. Our purpose is to ultimately provide education and direction to charitable individuals who wish to provide a legacy contribution to the Law Enforcement organization of their choice through the miracle of planned giving.
What is a Planned Gift?
A “planned gift” is a deferred charitable contribution that is carefully crafted — usually with professional advice — to optimize a donor’s financial, tax, and estate plans while helping to secure the long-term financial strength of one or more Law Enforcement charities or other similar organizations. Unlike most other means of charitable giving, planned gifts are "deferred" gifts. They are created now to provide for a charitable benefit at a later date. Gifts are structured to enhance the tax deduction benefits the donor receives (both now and in the future) for making the charitable gift. Many planned gifts offer the donor a both tax-favored income stream and a charitable income tax deduction now, while providing for a deferred gift to their favorite charity at a later date.
How do planned gifts benefit Law Enforcement Charities?
Your planned gift can create a legacy for the Law Enforcement charity of your choice by providing endowment support. Working with you and your professional advisors - your accountant, estate planning attorney, and financial advisors Champions for Law Enforcement can help you craft a plan that will provide you and your family with significant tax savings and help you fulfill important financial and estate planning goals. The plan will include a charitable gift to your charity of choice that you can designate to permanently endow specific Law Enforcement charitable programs such as widows and orphan assistance programs, scholarships, disabled in-the-line-of duty officers and On or Off-Duty End of Watch survivor assistance programs.
Examples of Planned Gifts
Planned giving encompasses a broad collection of strategies to help philanthropically-minded individuals address tax and estate planning concerns while making a charitable gift at the same time. The double benefit of "doing well and doing good" often means a donor can make a larger charitable impact through a carefully constructed planned gift while reducing income and estate tax liabilities. The following planned giving examples are not all-inclusive, but provide a small sample of the strategies available.
Life Insurance
When you first bought your life insurance policies, you felt a need for them. But now perhaps you don’t need all that coverage, yet you still have the policies. Making the Law Enforcement charity of your choice the beneficiary of your life insurance policy could be a meaningful and generous course of action. With the proper planning, transferring ownership of an unneeded life insurance policy also may provide both income tax and estate tax benefits. Champions for Law Enforcement can provide you and your advisors with illustrations of the many benefits of using unneeded life insurance to make a gift to your charity. You can also set up your charity as a partial beneficiary of an existing life insurance policy in the event the entire death benefit is no longer needed.
Donate a New Life Insurance Policy
In some cases individuals may have the desire to leave a Legacy Asset to a charity but may not have the assets to donate. One way to accomplish is by purchasing a new policy on your life and naming your charity as the owner and beneficiary. Upon your death, a sizeable, tax-free death benefit would be paid to the charity in your name. The premiums you pay during your life are income tax deductible as long as the policy is properly structured. Champions for Law Enforcement can help properly structure a life insurance policy for the benefit of the Law Enforcement Charity of your choice.
Life Settlements
Life Settlements also known as Senior Settlements, enable seniors to sell unneeded life insurance policies in the secondary market for an amount greater than the cash value offered by their insurance company but less than the death benefit. Life Settlements give seniors access to funds they otherwise might have lost had they surrendered their policies or, worse yet, let them lapse – outcomes that occur with nearly 80% of universal life policies according to a June 2005 report by Bernstein Research and Milliman, an insurance consulting firm. Life Settlements can provide your charity cash sooner rather than later which is often needed by charities. Champions for Law Enforcement can help you find the best deal for your life insurance policy through our nationwide network of Life Settlement companies.
IRAs as a Planned Giving Opportunity
You can name your Law Enforcement charity as the beneficiary of your IRA. When you pass away, the charity can liquidate the IRA and use the proceeds to establish an endowment to benefit the charity in perpetuity. As a charitable organization, they will pay no taxes on the IRA assets. The same IRA, left to family members, could lose more than half of its assets to income and estate taxes. If you have a charitable bequest of cash or other assets for your charity and have named family members as IRA beneficiaries, talk with your tax and legal advisors about funding the charitable gift from the IRA and leaving the other assets (which may be taxed at lower rates) to your family. A Life Insurance policy may be purchased to replace the taxable IRA assets for your loved ones, keep in mind the life insurance proceeds are income tax-free to your beneficiaries.
You can also make charitable gifts directly from your IRA to your charity if you have begun taking your IRA Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). Although this is technically not a planned gift, it provides a similar advantage to planned giving techniques in that it is a charitable gift that reduces your present income tax liability while reducing your future estate tax liabilities. Talk with your financial and tax advisors to see if a Direct IRA Charitable Rollover Distribution could benefit you and your family.
Bequests
The easiest planned gift to understand is a bequest. Through your will or living trust, you direct that certain property will pass to your charity upon your death. Because you retain control over the property and the ability to change or revoke your bequest, you do not receive any economic benefit in the form of a charitable income tax deduction during your lifetime. Your estate, however, will realize a charitable deduction for the value of the assets you have bequeathed to the Law Enforcement Charity of your choice.
Real Estate
A charitable contribution of real estate can give you valuable tax benefits. These benefits may include the reduction or elimination of capital gains taxes. There are even ways to make a gift of real estate and receive a lifetime income in exchange, all while generating significant tax deductions. You may also donate a "remainder interest" in your home while reserving your ownership for life, a strategy that can give you an income tax deduction now while reducing your potential estate tax liability (and probate costs) later. Contact us if you are contemplating a gift of real estate.
Life Income Gifts
"Life Income Gifts" are special trusts or annuity agreements that provide you and your spouse (or other family members you designate) with an income for life or a specified period of time. After the trust or annuity has funded this lifetime income, the balance that is left benefits the charity. Life Income Gifts can be structured a variety of ways. If properly structured, they can provide an income tax charitable deduction and/or avoidance of capital gains taxes for the gift you establish now, even though the charitable part of the gift may not take effect for many years (or until your death.)
Charitable Lead Gifts
Charitable Lead Trusts are funded by a donor and provide immediate income to the charitable beneficiary for a specified period of time or until a specific "triggering event" causes the trust to revert back to a non-charitable beneficiary specified by the donor. A common use of a lead trust is to pay a pledge to a charitable organization with a heavily funded trust, and after payment of the pledge to pass the balance of the trust to the donor's children or grandchildren. Charitable lead trusts are among the most complex planned giving vehicles, but if properly structured they can provide some of the largest charitable benefit and the greatest tax savings to the donor and remainder beneficiaries (usually the heirs of the donor.)
As you can see there are many choices for the charitable minded individual and Champions for Law Enforcement is here to help you make the right decision. Feel free to contact us when you’re ready to talk about charitable options that may be right for you. You can also email your questions to us at: info@lawenforcementlifeinsurance.com.
We hope you will see the value of Charitable Giving and become a
“Champion for Law Enforcement”
Mo Gelfo, President
Law Enforcement Life
