Retained Life Estate

A retained life estate plus charitable gift annuity combines two gift arrangements. The arrangements allow a donor to use some of the value of her home or farm to fund a plan that will make payments to her or others for life.

A retained life estate is a gift plan defined by federal tax law that allows an individual to donate her home or farm to a charity while retaining the right to live in it for the rest of her life.

Publication 1459 is a book of federal tables used to compute retained life estate deductions. The edition that contains tables based on Table2000CM. It is available on the Web. The edition that contains tables based on Table 90CM is called Actuarial Values, Book Gimel. The edition that contains tables based on Table 80CNSMT is called Actuarial Values, Book Alpha.

In the context of planned giving, "depreciable portion" is relevant to retained life estatesRetained_Life_Estate only. The depreciable portion is the value of the buildings and should be listed separately in a qualified appraisal of the real estate. In most cases, the only building in a retained life estate is a house.

You must know the depreciable portion to compute the deduction for a retained life estate.

In contrast, the undepreciable portion is the value of the land that comes with the buildings in a retained life estate.

For many donors, their home is their most valuable asset. They most likely plan to live there for many years and it would never occur to them that they could use their home to make a charitable gift. Likewise, there are many donors with a valuable second home that they continue to use regularly and have never considered giving to charity. In both cases, the retained life estate may offer the key to unlocking just such a gift.