Flower Bond

What do flower power and the term “pushing up daisies” have in common? Not much, but they can both help us remember what flower bonds are.

These bonds don’t really exist anymore—the last one was issued in 1971—but when they did, they allowed a person to pre-pay their estate taxes so that their beneficiaries wouldn’t have to after they died. Any money left after those taxes were paid went to the beneficiary.

Unlike most bonds, flower bonds didn’t come with a preset maturity date. They matured—or “flowered”—when the bondholder died. They didn’t have any minimum or maximum time limits, either; a person could buy one twenty years or the day before their death and they’d still serve the same purpose.