IRA at death
Wife just passed away, she was about 80. Fidelity rolled over her IRAs to her spouse’s accounts since he was beneficiary. One traditional account and one Roth.
Was there a better alternative?
Spouse is 83
Wife just passed away, she was about 80. Fidelity rolled over her IRAs to her spouse’s accounts since he was beneficiary. One traditional account and one Roth.
Was there a better alternative?
Spouse is 83
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Mon, 2020-06-29 22:26
There are only 3 other alternatives, cash out the inherited account, convert it to Roth, or leave it as inherited. How old is the surviving spouse?
Permalink Submitted by Gerard Stellwagen on Mon, 2020-06-29 23:41
spoue is 83
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Tue, 2020-06-30 00:24
Then the best choice is the spousal rollover, which was done. He can now take RMDs using the Uniform table that generates the lowest possible RMD amount in this situation for the TIRA. There is no RMD for the Roth IRA. That said, I hope he requested these spousal rollovers to his own IRAs as Fidelity should not be doing it automatically.
Permalink Submitted by David Mertz on Tue, 2020-06-30 02:06
Also, hopefully these were moved to the surviving spouse’s IRAs by retitling or by trustee-to-trustee transfer, either of which is not reportable, rather than by distribution and rollover since distributing and rolling over more than one of these would be a violation of the one-rollover-per-12-months limitation.