Family trusts and life insurance options are often overlooked when thinking of how to pay for a post-secondary education

Below is a great article written by Tim Cesnick and published in The Globe and Mail.

Family trusts and life insurance options are often overlooked when thinking of how to pay for a post-secondary education

Now that my kids have decided they want to be brain surgeons, I’ve been thinking about how to pay for their post-secondary education. Two methods of saving for a child’s education are often overlooked. The first is a family trust, and the second is life insurance.

FAMILY TRUST

A trust is simply a legal relationship between three parties: The settlor (the person creating the trust), the trustee (the person who holds and controls the property of trust) and the beneficiary (the person for whom the property of the trust is being held). The nice thing about a trust is that it’s possible to have the income of the trust taxed in the hands of the beneficiaries, who may pay little or no tax if they are minors and have little or no other income.

Setting up a trust does come with a cost, so it’s not generally going to make sense unless you’re willing and able to commit a sustantial sum to the trust over a short period of time. You can make this a loan to the trust if you want, so that you can take back your capital again later, as a repayment of the loan.

Once the money is in the trust, any interest and dividend income earned in the trust will be attributed back to you to be taxed in your hands while the beneficiaries of the trust are minors (unless you charge the taxman’s prescribed rate of interest on a loan to the trust), but capital gains can be taxed in the hands of the beneficiaries. Also, any second generation income (that is, income on the income, even if it’s interest or dividends) can be taxed in the hands of your children.

You can pay for all or part of your child’s education costs out of the income or capital of the trust. The taxman will consider payments to third parties, including reimbursements to you, as being paid to the beneficiary as long as those payments were clearly for the benefit of your child. To the extent that little or no tax has been paid on the income of the trust over the years (by having income taxed in your child’s hands), you’ll effectively be using pre-tax dollars to pay for the child’s education.

The benefits of the trust include: protection of the assets of the trust from creditors, splitting income with your children, maintaining control over the assets, and flexibility to use the trust funds for things other than education. There’s a lot to consider when setting up a trust. 

LIFE INSURANCE

Life insurance is an interesting tool because you can accumulate investments inside a policy on a tax-sheltered basis. Further, if it is the life of your child that is insured, you’re able to transfer ownership of the policy, including the accumulated investments inside the policy, to your child free of tax once he or she reaches age 18. Your child can then make withdrawals of those investments from the policy to pay for education. While those withdrawals are generally going to be taxable to your child, he’ll likely pay little or no tax if he has little or no other income.

One of the benefits of choosing a whole life insurance policy is that the returns have been incredibly stable over the years, even throughout 2008. The reason for this is that the insurance companies are allowed to smooth, or average, the returns you receive over a period of years.

Consider some numbers. If you pay $2,750 annually into a whole life policy each year until your child is 18, there could be $70,000 to $75,000 in the accumulating fund to be accessed (varies by insurance company), assuming a 5 per cent annual return inside the policy. If you set aside the same $2,750 in a tax-free savings account (TFSA) you could end up with approximately $84,000 earning that same 5 per cent, but this would assume a portfolio that is largely in equities that is subject to the volatility of the markets. If you earned, say, 6 per cent in the TFSA, you’d have close to $92,000 in this case, with the volatility.

Life insurance also offers asset protection, flexibility to use the assets for any purpose, and a death benefit ($265,000 in my example) over and above the investment component of the policy if your child passes away prematurely. Insurance is just another tool to consider.

As usual, please do not hesitate to contact Hugues Boisvert should you have any questions. hboisvert@hazlolaw.com.com