People planning to give to charity through a charitable remainder trust soon may need written permission from their spouses in order to conform with new requirements about to be adopted by the Internal Revenue Service, the Washington Post reports.

A charitable remainder trust, or CRT, allows a donor to leave some or all of her assets to a favored charity in return for a tax deduction but still retain the income from the trust for life. At the end of the income-generation period, the trust's assets go to the charity. The problem the IRS is trying to resolve arises when CRTs come into conflict with laws, in effect in most states, that prevent a spouse from being disinherited. People who live in states that have such laws generally aren't required to share property with their spouses during their lifetimes. When they die, however, their spouses have the right to claim a certain portion of their assets. The IRS's new spousal-waiver requirements, slated to take effect June 28, are being criticized as a heavy-handed response to a legitimate though rare problem — namely that surviving spouses in certain states can prevent a portion of a trust's assets from reverting to a charity, even though the deceased donor benefited in life from a tax deduction for the gift.

According to the IRS, anyone who creates an "inter vivos" trust — that is, a trust created during the donor's lifetime — on or after June 28 must have a legitimate waiver in place negating any claims by a surviving spouse to the trust's assets. Trusts without such a waiver will fail to qualify as a CRT, which is being interpreted by many to mean the trust loses its tax benefits.

Critics of the new rules argue that donors who fail to get a legitimate waiver can lose the tax benefits of a CRT even if the surviving spouse doesn't claim a portion of the trust's assets. It is "going to have a chilling effect" on the use of these trusts, said Michael Duffy, a senior director with Mellon Financial Corp. in Atlanta.

According to Conrad Teitell, a lawyer with Cummings & Lockwood in Stamford, Connecticut, the issue is legitimate. "If the charity doesn't get the money, the government should," said Teitell. But, he added, he has never heard of a case where a spouse has interfered with a charity's claim to the full assets of a CRT.