Wall Street Journal, Who Gets the Vacation Home?:

Is there a way to hand off a vacation home to the next generation so that everyone still wants to spend time together there?

Two types of trusts to consider are a dynasty trust and a "qualified personal residence trust," or QPRT. Either could help families take advantage of a temporary increase in the gift-tax exemption to $5.12 million from $1 million for individuals and to $10.24 million from $2 million for couples.

In the case of an unusual property that a family hopes to preserve for generations, rather than losing "a rare gem you could never recreate as a family," a "dynasty" trust might make the most sense, says Martin Shenkman, an estate-planning lawyer in Paramus, N.J. Such a trust "could go on forever." And once you've made the gift to the trust, he says, it's no longer subject to estate taxes. In most cases, he says, the property should be held in an LLC owned by the trust, with the trust typically set up in one of four states that allow them: Alaska, Delaware, Nevada or South Dakota.

A QPRT lets a homeowner give a residence to the trust while still allowing him to use it for a set number of years before transferring ownership to heirs at a discount to the current market value. "If you're looking for a more tax-efficient way to divvy this thing up, the QPRT may be the way to go," says Blanche Lark Christerson, managing director at Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management in New York.