Bring Complex Strategies to Life: Model GRATs, CRTs, and CLT scenarios with Luminary

For high-net-worth clients, strategies like GRATs, SLATs, CRTs, and CLTs can unlock meaningful tax savings, but they’re notoriously difficult to model and explain—often requiring weeks of back-and-forth between spreadsheets, software, and specialist collaborators. Presenting these ideas in a way that’s both accurate and accessible is a persistent challenge for even the most experienced advisory teams.

In February, Luminary introduced the ability to model installment sales and intra-family loans within hypothetical estate waterfalls. Today, those capabilities expand even further—with support for GRATs, CLTs, and CRTs now part of your strategy modeling toolkit. You can also layer in valuation discounts, enabling your team to simulate any combination of complex strategies in just minutes. Quickly compare, quantify, and present your recommendations with greater precision—and drive more impactful client conversations.

Outdated tools can undermine sophisticated planning

Developing advanced estate planning strategies and conveying their potential impact to clients requires significant manual effort and time from advisors and their collaborators. When these processes rely on disconnected tools, it not only slows things down—it increases the likelihood of mistakes.

For example, GRATs must be carefully structured to pass appreciation to heirs with minimal gift tax, and often involve complex annuity payment structuring. CRTs and CLTs involve intricate calculations around income distributions, term lengths, and projected remainder values. Illiquid assets often require valuation discounts to accurately reflect taxable value. Each of these must be evaluated within the broader context of the client’s full estate—including all assets, exemptions, liabilities, and the timing of death events.

Until now, modeling these strategies meant relying on disconnected spreadsheets, static tax software, and emails with cross-team collaborators. It’s difficult enough when you’re trying to model a single strategy, and layering strategies becomes a weeks-long endeavor, resulting in significant delays in delivering strategy recommendations to clients.

See strategy impact flow through the estate waterfall

Now, you can model all your advanced planning strategies directly inside Luminary’s estate waterfall diagram, for easy visualization in client-ready diagrams. In minutes, simulate funding a hypothetical GRAT, CRT, or CLT, with a guided, intuitive user interface that allows you to choose funding assets, set terms and 7520 rates, and model projected impact assuming various levels of growth. 

See the impact of your strategy updates in real-time—as adjustments are made to assumptions, all calculations are automatically updated, from annuity payouts to remainder distributions. Want to layer multiple strategies? See their combined impact immediately in just a few clicks. 

Build, layer, and compare complex transfers in minutes

Comparing multiple hypothetical scenarios is also easier than ever. Display side-by-side projections illustrating any combination of strategies supported in Luminary (discounted gifts and transfers, SLATs, installment sales and loans, GRATs, CRTs, CLTs, and more) to easily help clients understand the best recommendation tailored to their goals. 

Offer expert estate planning guidance with ease

Luminary hypothetical modeling enables you to focus on client outcomes, not number-crunching. Unlock the ability to:

• Model GRATs in minutes – Automatically calculate annuity payments, specify taxable gift amounts or "zeroed-out", with fixed or increasing annuity payments, and more. Compare different funding amounts or term lengths to find the ideal fit for your client.
  
  
• Simulate CRTs and CLTs – Explore how lifetime or term-based charitable trusts impact estate value, beneficiary inheritance, and charitable giving—in dynamic, client-ready visuals.
  
  
• Include discounted gifts – Factor in entity-level valuation discounts and see how they reduce gift and estate taxes across strategies like SLATs, installment sales, and GRATs.
  
  
• Bring scenarios to life in just minutes – Build client presentations directly from the estate waterfall view and guide your clients through key planning decisions without PowerPoint or Excel.

Get started 

Modeling even the most complex planning scenarios takes just minutes. To get started, create a hypothetical waterfall, click “Add Hypothetical Transfer,” and choose your strategy—GRAT, CRT, CLT, Sale, Loan, Gift, or others. Input a few key details: the source asset, term, growth assumptions, and payout structure. That’s it. Luminary will handle the calculations and surface the results in your estate view and client presentation.

Advisors can now go from idea to illustrated strategy in minutes. The ability to model GRATs, CRTs, and CLTs as part of a client’s full estate plan—without spreadsheets—unlocks the next level of planning intelligence and client engagement.

           — David Barnard, CEO, Luminary

Wealth transfer expertise at your fingertips

Whether you’re helping clients capitalize on rapid fluctuations in asset prices with GRATs, maximize charitable impact with CLTs, or optimize estate tax outcomes with discounted gifts, Luminary gives you the tools to model and communicate your strategies with confidence.

Want to see it in action? Schedule a demo or explore your next hypothetical strategy inside Luminary today.

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