Anyone who’s done any estate planning in recent years has discovered there is an almost universal new use of an old fashioned word. Life insurance agents, accountants, financial planners, and (yes!) lawyers have conspired to morph the word gift from a noun to a verb. And the non-professional clients can hardly be blamed for thinking, “I suppose it’s a proper technical use of the word”.
So it is that we who help with estate planning hear our clients say things like, “I plan to gift my estate equally among my kids”.
At seminars we have highly sophisticated estate planners advise us to guide our clients carefully in their gifting programs, etc.
What has happened to the perfectly serviceable verb to give? I believe it all starts with the complicated gift provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. As different estate planning strategies have evolved, often with complex gift provisions in wills and trusts, somehow all the specialists have gradually substituted gift for give to the point where dictionaries classify gift both as a noun and a transitive verb. Alors! This battle is lost?
Here’s a question. The next time you are speaking with one of these fancy specialists, explaining that you would like to transfer something of substance to your favorite niece; and he or she says, “why don’t you gift it to her in your will?” You might reply “Gift me back my language, please!”
— Ken Butera