Nonprofit Law Blog:  “A charitable lead annuity trust (CLAT) is an irrevocable split-interest trust in which the income interest is to be paid over to one or more charitable organizations, in the form of an annuity, and the remainder interest is to be paid over to one or more noncharitable beneficiaries. Typically, CLATs are designed to provide an annual payment that is level throughout the trust term – either a stated amount or percentage of the value of the initial trust corpus. But according to attorney Jerry McCoy, an expert on charitable tax planning, unlike the case with a charitable remainder annuity trust, “a CLAT may provide for an annuity amount that is initially stated as a fixed dollar or fixed percentage amount but increases during the annuity period. The only stipulation is that the value of the annuity amount must be ascertainable at the time the trust is funded.”