Articles Tagged with southampton estate planning lawyer

PASSING THE FARM IS LIKE PASSING ON THE FAMILY CORPORATION

There is no doubt that some modern farmers run large multi-million dollar operations right in their backyard.  Maintaining a herd of cows and other grazing stock costs potentially millions to buy or lease (or both) land for the animals to grow on.  In addition, the processing equipment for milking cows, labor costs, insurance, veterinarian costs and any number of other costs can run into the millions each year.  While most farmers are far from millionaires, most work much harder than many millionaires.  Indeed there is more to farming than the land, buildings, equipment, animal stock or orchards and other tangible objects.  Tending to corn fields, wheat, soy, orchards, vineyards, sod, tree farms, et cetera are all specific skill sets that require years of training and no small measure of technological investment.  The same can be said of a family run saw mill or similar type of business.  There is something unique about farmers, however.  

Many families are tied to the land.  John Mellencamp who was raised in farm country and one of the original founders of Farm Aid wrote about the life of the average farmer, growing up on the same farm that his own daddy did on land cleared by his grandpa, walking along the fence while holding his grandfather’s hand and of being tied to land that fed a nation and made him proud.  It is this tie to the land, unique education and training that can start literally while the child is in diapers as well as the emotional bond with families that makes farmers different than most other family run small businesses.  There are also unique legal protections found throughout the law for the benefit of family farmer.  For all of these reasons transferring a family farm from one generation to the next requires special planning.

STRANGE NAME, GREAT CONCEPT

A person is entitled to gift up to $14,000 per year without incurring any gift tax liability. There are some limitations to those gifts, however. The gift must be for the unlimited, present usage of the interest that is being conveyed. That creates problems for when someone wants to convey up to $14,000 per year to a minor but not have the same money handed over to the minor in its entirety when the minor reaches the age of 21. Gift tax liability is controlled by 26 U.S.C. § 2503. 2503(b) states that in order to qualify for the gift tax exclusion the giftor (person giving the gift) must convey a present interest. Subsection (c) states that if the recipient is a minor, the giftor can put the money into a trust that will convey the money to the minor when they are 21 years old and it will still be considered a present interest for purposes of gift tax liability. So, if you want to give $14,000 to a trust for a minor, with the intention that the minor not withdrawal all of the monies accumulated when they reach 21, so that they may obtain the benefit of compound interest and allow the $14,000 to grow even more, the Crummey trust is the right tool.

While the Crummey trust may have a strange sounding name, it comes from the name of the person who first created such trust, D. Clifford Crummey, and the resulting Tax Court opinion of 1966. It works by gifting a certain sum of money to a trust as a gift, with the right of immediate withdrawal from the trust by the recipient, with the expectation that the recipient will not withdrawal the money or liquidate the asset from the trust. The law recognizes the right to immediate withdrawal, not actual realization of the present interest as satisfying the present interest requirement under 2503. This right of withdrawal for a limited period of time is called the Crummey power. In 1999, the IRS issued a letter ruling on the Crummey trust and outlined the four criteria to qualify as a Crummey trust.

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