Life Insurance

Do you have a life insurance policy that you no longer need for its original purpose? Are your children grown and self-supporting? Will your family be well taken care of thanks to other assets that you will be leaving to them?

A paid-up life insurance policy can make a great gift to Barnard. In order to claim a current charitable income tax deduction for a gift of a paid-up policy, you must name the College as owner and beneficiary of the policy. The value of the gift is the cost basis or cash surrender value of the policy, whichever is less. (Please note: The donor of a life insurance policy is responsible for obtaining an independent qualified appraisal, which is required by the IRS for noncash charitable gifts valued over $5,000.) Premium payments for a life insurance policy for which Barnard is both the owner and beneficiary may be treated as charitable gifts; please consult with your personal advisers.

To name Barnard as a beneficiary of a life insurance policy, the following information may be helpful:

Official name:  BARNARD COLLEGE

Address:

3009 Broadway - Planned Giving

New York, NY 10027

Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN):  13-1628149
(sometimes called Employer Identification Number, or EIN)

For other questions about gifts of life insurance, please contact Audra Lewton, Senior Associate Director, Planned Giving, at alewton@barnard.edu or (212) 854-0787.

If you have named Barnard College as the owner and beneficiary of your life insurance policy, or even as the beneficiary only, please let us know so we can enroll you in The Athena Society. Thank you!

Gift in Action
Pat ’63 had a life insurance policy that she purchased early in her career. After she reached age 65, the annual premiums were set to double. She no longer felt that she needed the policy because she had other assets to leave to her family and she just couldn’t see spending the money on the annual premiums any longer. After talking to her financial adviser, she decided she would donate the policy to Barnard. Pat and her financial adviser discussed the plan with Barnard’s Planned Giving office and they all worked together to make Barnard the owner and beneficiary of the policy. Pat understood that Barnard would immediately surrender the policy and put the cash proceeds to work for students right away. She designated the proceeds from the policy for The Barnard Fund, knowing that support of the College's day-to-day needs is crucial. Pat was extremely happy about this plan—she could not have otherwise made a gift of that size and she was able to take a sizeable income tax charitable deduction in the year the policy was transferred to Barnard (she worked with an independent qualified appraiser to obtain the IRS-required qualified appraisal to substantiate the value of her gift).