Estate Planning

How charitable are you?

By Hull and Hull LLP

I thought I would start off this week's blogs by discussing planned giving. Planned giving provides a mechanism for people to contribute to programs that they support. In this way, people are able to target their philanthropic efforts towards programs that they believe will improve communities. The book, The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets a Business Plan, captures this idea perfectly and I recommend it as a must read. The authors, Charles Bronfman and Jeffrey Solomon, recognize that giving is meaningful and personal. So, for example, individuals who love animals may decide to donate part of their estates to animal welfare organizations.

So how do you want to improve your community? What about willing your body to a 'body farm'? This is 1 of the 10 suggestions made in a CNN Report written by Elizabeth Cohen entitled 'Ten uses for your body after you die'.

The body farm, as it is known, is located in Knoxville, Tennessee and has 650 skeletons scattered over 2.5 acres so that anthropology students are able to study bodies in varying stages of decay for the purposes of learning about body identification and time of death analysis.

If your charitable inclination is to donate your body to the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center (aka the body farm) click here.

If you're undecided, check out the Art of Giving. It's a good place to start if you are considering providing for charitable donations in your will.
 

Thanks for reading!

Kathryn Pilkington

Full post as published by Toronto Estate Law Blog on November 01, 2010 (boomark / email).