Two Inherited IRAs in Trust

Two inherited IRAs are owned by an Irrevocable Marital Trust. I do not know the history, but both are titled the same and are from the same decedent (survivor’s spouse). They differ in the RMD calculation in that one uses surviving spouse’s LE and the other uses the decedent’s remaining LE. I presume the latter may have either not had a bene or estate was named, and executor assignerd it to the trust. The spouse would like to combine them. My thinking is they would have to remain separate, to facilitate the calculations. I think they purposely made the trust irrevocable since there is a spendthrift son and mom is a soft touch.



As a practical matter, the marital trust has to be irrevocable after the death of the first spouse.

You could give the surviving spouse the power to withdraw all of the assets of the marital trust, but if you’re going to do that, you might as well simply leave the marital share to the spouse outright.



Assuming the reasons for the different RMDs are legitimate, the IRAs should not be combined. I am not aware of the consequences of doing that, but more than likely the lower divisor would have to be used for the combined IRA.



It turns out one custodian is using wrong table.



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