No Beneficiary on IRA

Greetings.

My father recently passed away at the age of 71. He had a Traditional IRA account with over $700,000.

In his Will, he left all his assets to his wife (my mother), who is 71 years old. These were assets accumulated during their 40-year marriage. He had no previous spouses. His only children (2 sons) were the children of him and his wife.

Unfortunately, no beneficiary was named on the IRA. Therefore, the IRA will now move into Probate. The Probate will be conducted in King County in Washington State.

During Probate, my father’s IRA will move into an estate account. Then the funds will move from the estate account to my mother’s ownership.

My question is this.

How many years does my mother have to take her distributions and pay taxes on the assets that she will receive from the estate account?

One attorney claimed these assets had to be distributed over 5 years, with all taxes paid in that short period of time. Another attorney claimed we could distribute these assets gradually over the course of my mother’s expected life expectancy, paying taxes on each required minimum distribution taken in each year.

My mother obviously would like to distribute these assets over a long time period, as that minimizes her taxation payout and places her in a lower tax bracket.

If there’s anyone here who is well versed on this issue, we would welcome your expertise.

Thank you.



  • The IRS has issued numerous private letter rulings that allow a surviving spouse who is the beneficiary of her husband’s estate to do a spousal rollover to her own IRA account. I am not aware of any adverse decisions on such letter rulings. Her RMDs would then be taken over her life expectancy using the Uniform table, the same end result as if she had been named directly as beneficiary of the IRA. These RMDs are much lower than would otherwise be the case and this also allows her own beneficiaries to get a new stretch upon her death. She just needs to find an IRA custodian who will accept a spousal rollover under these conditions to open an IRA to receive the rollover. She should start with a major IRA Custodian, as they are more aware of these issues. The executor should NOT take a distribution from the IRA until they find a custodian to accept the rollover. This process may be easier if mother is also the executor of his estate. These attorneys do not seem to be familiar with this option. If you want the numbers of such rulings, please advise and also indicate if she is the executor or not.
  • It may also be helpful to know if Dad passed before his RBD or not. Death at 71 could be before OR after the RBD, which is 4/1 of the year following the year he reached 70.5. There are current year RMD implications for this info.


Thankyou for your thorough response.He passed in September 2019, two months shy of age 72. 



  • His DOD was after his required beginning date, so the 5 year rule does not apply even if the spousal rollover is not completed. If his 2019 RMD was not completed prior to his death, his estate is responsible for distributing the balance of his 2019 RMD by year end. However, if the spousal rollover is successful, the RMD could wait for Mom to take it. Even if this does not get done this year and his remaining RMD is not distributed until 2020, the IRS will waive the penalty for being late with a properly filed 2019 5329. The other choice is to have the estate take the 2019 RMD and pass it through to Mom on a K 1. She would then report it on their final joint return for 2019. 
  • If the spousal rollover is not done first, the executor could assign the inherited IRA out of the estate to Mom as beneficiary, and she could then distribute the 2019 RMD, if any. She could still do the spousal rollover from the inherited IRA to her own, and if this is completed before the end of 2020, her 2020 RMD would be calculated from the Uniform Table since she would be treated as owning the IRA for the entire year of 2020.
  • The order of some of these actions is flexible, particularly taking the year of death RMD if not yet completed. The order can be determined according to the convenience of the executor and mother.


Alan is correct.  There are dozens of private letter rulings allowing a rollover in this situation.  I’ve obtained some of them.  I wrote an article on this in the October 1997 issue of Estate Planning, https://www.kkwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/AR20050125164755.pdf , and another article on this for the June 2015 issue of Trusts & Estates, https://www.kkwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/IRA-Rollovers-Making-this-option-possible.pdf .Depending on the custodian, they may want a ruling or an opinion of counsel before allowing the rollover.  With a $700,000 IRA, either of these would be worth the effort.



Thankyou to Mr. Alan and Mr. Steiner.  Your posts were EXTREMELY helpful and helped add clarity to this issue.  All the best.



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