What To Do With An ILIT When the Estate Is No Longer Taxable
Russell E. Towers JD, CLU, ChFC
Advanced Markets,
ILITs
2 Comments
21 Oct 2015
Since the federal estate tax exemption is $5.43 million (single) and $10.86 million (married), does paying premiums for life insurance owned by an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT) that was purchased years ago when the estate tax exemption was much lower make sense anymore?
Are there other important retirement and protection needs that could be covered with the annual premium that has been gifted to the ILIT for many years?
A current no-lapse single-life universal life (UL) policy or no-lapse survivorship universal life (SUL) policy may still provide a good internal rate of return (IRR) on death benefit at life expectancy. And the pre-tax equivalent is even better because the life insurance death benefit is income tax-free. However, the federal estate tax exemption may have only been between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 when the trust-owned policy was purchased and it made sense at the time to offset projected estate taxes with estate tax-free insurance owned by the ILIT.