I have two donors who were married at the time they established their joint and survivor deferred gift annuity. Their annuity is scheduled to start paying out in 2011. Subsequent to the establishment of their gift, they got divorced.
The divorce decree made no mention of the deferred gift annuity and one of the donors has asked me to split the payments between he and his ex-wife.
Please advise on two questions:
1) What is the process of splitting the gift into two equal shares; and
2) Once the gift is split into two shares, what happens when one of the donors dies (does the former spouse get the other 1/2 share or does it go straight to charity)?
If anyone knows of an article on this topic, I'd love to read it.
Thank you all very much for your input.
Darrin Goldin
goldind@ujafedny.org
Deferred Gift Annuity - Divorce's Impact
The splitting of payments, with equally shared tax portions, makes no difference to the IRS. (The payment, not the gift, would be split into two.) If the agreement says all of the payment to one and then all to the other after the first person's death, then an amendment would have to be made on this provision. (How difficult that would be should be addressed by an attorney, but the charity would also have to agree.)
As far as the continuation of the payments, the agreement is joint and survivor, so after the first ex-spouse dies, the surviving ex-spouse should get the entire payment.
Doug White