To avoid estate taxes, some Louisiana families utilize special trusts known as Crummey trusts in making annual gifts to family. Currently, each individual may gift up to $15,000 per gift recipient without negatively impacting their lifetime estate and gift tax exemption. We call this amount the annual gift tax exclusion amount. Gifting this amount to trust is especially wise when the gift recipient is young. Most grandparents would rather not hand over $15,000 in cash directly to an 18 year old grandchild. They'd probably rather invest and grow those gifts for the grandchild's future. A gift into trust allows for [...]