One way that you might wish to use your estate plan is to pass on assets to a charity. A new study completed by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute shows that charitable giving typically stays the same after retirement, whereas other types of spending decreased during these years. 
Other differences in how married couples, single women and single men choose to give are also quite consistent after retirement, which dispels a common myth that people who are retired won’t give money or don’t have money to give. The report looked at charitable giving starting in 2001 and tracked it over several years in relation to 6,000 married, cohabitating or single households, where people were between the ages of 55 and 101.
They looked at the frequency and the amount of charitable giving and compared it with other purchasing.
They found that the likelihood of giving will decrease by 4% in a span of 5 years shortly before and after retirement. But this is much less than the average decrease in spending for the same age category; 16% on average. One of the key differences that the study identified is that married couples and single women give higher amounts to charity than single men.
Single women were more likely to spread out their charitable giving and provide different amounts each year to a number of different charities, whereas men were more likely to give figure amounts sporadically.
If you intend to include charitable giving in your estate plan, there are many different tools available to do this and a lawyer can help you ensure that you have considered all of the various aspects before articulating your own charitable giving plan to maximize the amount given to the organization and enhance any benefits available to you.
