My parents are trying to gift my wife, children and I money. To stay within the 14k gift exclusion do they need to write checks to each of us vs one large check?

[DanO]

Your parents can write a check of $14,000 for each of you and not have to bother with filing Form 709 for the gift tax. Actually, each parent could give a $14,000 gift to each of you and not need to file.

Even if they want to write one large check in excess of $14,000 they wouldn't need to actually pay any taxes unless they exceeded the $5.49 million federal estate exemption along the way.  Filing the 709 gift tax form is a way of keeping track of the reduction in the estate tax exemption.

[golomb-andrew]

They want to avoid filling out the 709 since it has to be done manually.  So if they wrote one large check to me and I divided up between everyone, they'd still need to fill out the 709?

[DanO]

If the check was for more than $14,000 then they would need to file the 709 since the check was written to one recipient.