I would say not necessarily. Depending on the electronic structure, the Franck Condon state may bear significant CT character already. The following work shows the effect of distance on electron donor/acceptor coupling, though measured only with TCSPC:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jp063038s

The system goes from direct excitation of the CT state to typical LE->CT kinetics. In the former case there is no precursor-successor relationship but only a simple decay.