Special Power of Appointment
Example: "I leave my cactus collection to my children, my wife Pat to choose who receives which cactus."
A special power of appointment allows the recipient to distribute the designated property among a specified group or class of people, not including donee, donee's estate, creditors of donee, or creditors of donee's estate. For example, a testator might grant his brother the special power to distribute property among the testator's three children. The brother would then have the authority to choose which of the testator's children gets which property. Unlike a general power of appointment, the refusal of the appointed party to exercise a specific power of appointment causes the designated property to revert as a gift to the members of a group or a class.
A special power of appointment may be exclusive or nonexclusive. If exclusive, the donee can appoint all the property to one or more members of the class of permissible appointees to the exclusion of the other members of the class. If nonexclusive, the donee must appoint some property to each object.
Special powers of appointment also appear in the context of a trust and are primarily used to reduce liability for generation-skipping transfer tax, or to provide asset protection trust features without fraudulent conveyance liability. Such trusts are referred to as SPA Trusts.
Read more about this topic: Power Of Appointment
Famous quotes containing the words special power, special, power and/or appointment:
“The treatment of the incident of the assault upon the sailors of the Baltimore is so conciliatory and friendly that I am of the opinion that there is a good prospect that the differences growing out of that serious affair can now be adjusted upon terms satisfactory to this Government by the usual methods and without special powers from Congress.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every ten minutes.”
—J. William Fulbright (b. 1905)
“In not having an appointment at Harvard, I’m in the company of a great many people whose work I admire tremendously, in particular women of color.”
—Catharine MacKinnon (b. 1946)