Spouse IRA Beneficiary
Hello, if an IRA account owner passes and the beneficiary is a trust and the spouse is the beneficiary of the trust. Can the spouse by pass the trust and treat the assets as their in an established IRA? Or do they need to go to a IRA BDA for the trust first?
Thank you.
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Thu, 2018-09-20 15:00
If the trustee of the trust (spouse?) is allowed under the trust provisions, there are several PLRs that allow the spouse to roll over the IRA proceeds to their own IRA. However, there are many custodians that will not be comfortable with other PLRs and will want the spouse to apply for their own. Chances are better if the spouse is also the trustee as well as sole beneficiary of the trust. Whether the inherited IRA is retitled first to the trust or not is not important, especially if there are no distributions taken while the trust is named as beneficiary. Again, titling procedures may vary per custodian.