Although life insurance is generally not subject to income taxation upon the death of the insured, it is subject to estate taxes if the insured owns the policy (or has other ownership rights).
Owning a life insurance policy results in all or a portion of the insurance proceeds being included in the insured’s estate and therefore taxed when death occurs, thereby substantially defeating the purpose of buying the life insurance.
While it is true that life insurance which is received by a spouse is not subject to estate or inheritance taxes because of the unlimited marital deduction (assuming the surviving spouse is a citizen of the United States), those same proceeds will be included in the spouse’s estate later on when he or she dies. Therefore, life insurance trusts are often a good idea even when there is a surviving spouse to receive the proceeds.
Life insurance trusts offer a number of significant advantages over outright ownership. For starters, the trust will insulate the proceeds from the claims of creditors and from spouses in a divorce.
Also, life insurance trusts can be written to last for children’s lifetimes and then pass without estate taxes to additional trusts for grandchildren. This is a feature commonly referred to by estate planning lawyers as “generation skipping planning.” Your children shouldn’t be alarmed by the words “generation skipping” because you are not skipping them. Your children can serve as trustees of their trusts, and they can be given the power to make distributions to themselves or their children according to fairly liberal standards. Normally, trusts like the ones being described would allow your children to make distributions for their health, education, maintenance and support. And your children would be the ones determining how much money it takes to maintain and support themselves. Even though the life insurance proceeds will be held in a trust, your children would not be prevented from using the trust funds.