Large gift, how to avoid gift tax?

[4speedy]

My MIL died this past spring and left a co siderable amount to my DH.  A small chunk of it was in an IRA.  The person handling the estate messed up the transfer to my DH.  It should have rolled over as an IRA into my DH’s IRA but because of the snafu, it was handled as a withdrawal, which means we pay income taxes on it.  We would like to put as much of the bungled IRA money into a 529 for our kids as we are allowed.  The money is currently sitting in our checking account until it is transferred next week to the 529, so it is currently joint funds between DH and me.  

What is is the most we could deposit into a 529 without triggering gift taxes?  My understanding is that DH and I can each gift up to $15k per year per kid.  BUT we can also do a 5 year deferment.  So if I understand correctly, we could jointly gift each of our children $150k, and have it count as $30k ($15k from each of us) each year for the next 5 years.  If we do it this way, there would be no gift tax, right?

Am I understanding this correctly?  

I’ll be confirming with our tax guy but at the moment I am living overseas so communication is difficult due to the time difference.  We’re going back to the States next week, so for planning purposes, I’m trying to have as much figured out in advance since we only have two weeks at home to get things done. 

[stategirl08]

You only pay gift tax if your lifetime giving maximum is over the limit. It’s more tracking total gifts given.