Power of Appointment - Special Power of Appointment

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.