Heart of the Shore · Love of Humanity · October 26, 2026
With New Jersey's estate tax repealed and the federal exemption at $15 million, a shore family and an independent trust company sit down to talk through charitable remainder trusts, the exempt class, and the quiet question every estate has to answer: who's going to get it right once the first generation is gone? And where should the remainder actually land?
Today we take a quiet look at that question through the eyes of a fiduciary who makes it their only job. Our guest is a representative of Garden State Trust Company, an independent trust and estate company out of the shore. For the record, our guest is a fictionalized composite drawn from the people who actually do this work. The institutional facts we cite are from the company's own published materials and from New Jersey's public record.
Most families assume the trustee is just the bank. But a bank trust department administers a trust the way it administers anything else, as one line in a large product catalog, where you're a number on a queue. What a family is really asking, when they choose a trustee, is who's going to be objective. An independent trust company, the way Garden State was founded, is built on three principles, communication, objectivity, and above all, trust. The income it earns comes from making sure the trust is established and executed properly, nothing else. So its interest is aligned with the trust's terms, not with a sale.
Objectivity matters more than people think, especially on the shore, where a trust can touch a family for three generations. A lot of these are testamentary trusts, which means they're funded when someone dies, and the person who wrote the trust is no longer around to answer the hard questions. The beneficiaries call. The siblings disagree about what the language meant. The accountants want documentation. That's exactly where an independent trustee earns its keep. It has trust accounting systems in place, it understands how to provide information to beneficiaries, and, critically, it has the impartiality to implement the trust according to its terms without straining any family relationship. A death does not end the supervision of the trust, because a fiduciary, unlike a relative, does not step down. And the trust's assets are doubly supervised, both by internal audits and by regulatory oversight.
The ground has moved a lot for a family listening in Rumson or Fair Haven this year. New Jersey has repealed its estate tax, and the federal exemption is sitting at about fifteen million dollars per individual. That changes the urgency but not the principle. With the state estate tax gone and the federal floor high, more of a family's estate now passes on, which means more of it is available to be planned deliberately rather than lost to default. The instrument that has worked so well on the shore is the charitable remainder trust. You fund it with appreciated assets, often real estate or securities that have run up, and the trust pays you a steady income stream, either a fixed annuity or a percentage unitrust, for life or a set term. At the end of the term, the remainder goes to charity. And because the gift is to a charitable class, in New Jersey's inheritance tax it's the exempt class, so the charitable bequest carries no inheritance tax. You get income, you get a charitable deduction, you avoid immediate capital gains on the appreciated asset, and the community gets the remainder.
Here is where we put our foot down. The most common answer we hear from families is the community foundation. And we're not going to pretend that's the wrong answer for everyone. A community foundation is a real institution, and for some families, that's the right landing spot. But for a family that wants the remainder to do specific, on-the-ground work in Monmouth County, there is a better answer, and it's right here.
Love of Humanity is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that works on the shore, and it can be the charitable beneficiary of your charitable remainder trust. When you name us as the remainder, the money lands here — it funds our initiatives, it supports the family education and the community work we do on the Monmouth shore, and it stays in the community you live in. You get the income stream for life or a term. You get the charitable deduction. You avoid immediate capital gains on the appreciated asset. And the remainder — the part that used to go to a foundation in Trenton or a university in Lincroft — instead funds the work that you can see, that you can point to, that is actually happening in Rumson, in Fair Haven, in Little Silver, in Colts Neck, in Holmdel, in Middletown, in Deal, in Sea Girt, in Spring Lake.
Now, we're not going to tell you to ignore the other institutions. If your heart is set on a specific school, a specific scholarship, a specific street, a community foundation can help you narrow it. But the default — the place where the money has the most direct impact on the community you live in — is Love of Humanity. And if you want help structuring it, we can help with that too. We can walk you through the annuity versus unitrust decision, the tax math, the exempt class, the trustee selection. You don't have to figure it out alone. We're here to help you get it right, and to make sure the giving lands where it will do the most good on the shore.
The through-line is that the answer to who watches over your estate is no longer a default. It's a choice. And it's a choice that increasingly favors a fiduciary whose only incentive is that the trust is done right, and a charitable remainder that lands where the family actually lives. For the family in Rumson, Fair Haven, or Little Silver sitting with a sizable estate and a plan to give, the instruments are clear. A charitable remainder trust for the income and the exemption. Love of Humanity as the remainder, so the money funds the work on the shore. And an independent trustee in the room when the first generation is gone, so that the giving lands exactly where the family intended. And if you want a hand with the structuring, we're here. The invitation to get this right this year is already on the table.
Love of Humanity is the destination for the remainder, and the partner for the structuring. We help families understand what an independent fiduciary actually does before they commit. We walk through the charitable remainder trust, the annuity versus unitrust decision, the tax math, the exempt class, the trustee selection. And when the trust is funded and the income stream is running, the remainder lands here — it funds our initiatives, it supports the family education and the community work we do on the Monmouth shore. If you're looking to donate, or you want help using us to structure your giving, that's exactly what we're here for. See you on the boards.
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Board leader, foundation director, head of school, or family-office trustee reading this? We build co-branded family education with Monmouth institutions. partnerships@donatetoloveofhumanity.com
Garden State Trust Company, Ocean, NJ 07719 · 732-255-5000 · gstrustco.com. Community Foundation of New Jersey, (973) 267-5533 · cfnj.org. Monmouth University Planned Giving, Chuck Gerdon, 732-923-4623 · legacy@monmouth.edu.
*This episode is editorial. No fees were paid. Love of Humanity is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. This episode is AI-generated content.