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Your planned gift creates lasting impact and strengthens your financial future.

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Giving Home > How to Give > Bequest

Bequest

A bequest is a gift you can make to support Wheaton in your will or living trust or with a codicil.

Student lying on the grass in The Dimple looking at a laptop.

A bequest allows you to continue to use the property you will leave to Wheaton during your life and make a lasting impact on the college and our students after you are gone.

Benefits of a bequest

  • Receive an estate tax charitable deduction.
  • Reduce the burden of taxes on your family and heirs.
  • Leave a lasting legacy to Wheaton.

Charitable bequest video

How a bequest works

A bequest is one of the easiest gifts to make. With the help of an attorney, you can include language in your will or trust specifying a gift to be made to family, friends or Wheaton College as part of your estate plan, or you can make a bequest using a beneficiary designation form.

Ways you can leave a bequest to Wheaton College to make a lasting impact

  • Include a bequest to the college in your will or revocable trust.
  • Designate Wheaton as a full, partial or contingent beneficiary of your retirement account (IRA, 401(k), 403(b) or pension).
  • Name Wheaton as a beneficiary of your life insurance policy.

Ways to structure your bequest amount

  • Specific Bequest - Make a gift of a specific asset such as real estate, a car, other property or a gift for a specific dollar amount. For example, you may wish to leave your home or $10,000 to Wheaton College.
  • Percentage Bequest - Leave a specific percentage of your overall estate to the college. For example, you may wish to leave 10% of your estate to Wheaton.
  • Residual Bequest - Make a gift from the balance of your estate after your will or trust has given away each of your specific bequests. A common residual bequest involves leaving a percentage of the residue of your estate to Wheaton. For example, you may wish to leave 30% of the residue of your estate to the college.

Check out our helpful bequest language.

See how a generous Founders Society member utilized a bequest to Wheaton to achieve their philanthropic goals.

Contact us

Contact us with questions on making your bequest to Wheaton or to request any additional information that might be helpful to you and your attorney.

If you have included a bequest for the college in your estate plan, please let us know. We would be honored to thank you and welcome you to the Founders Society.