Post Death IRA conversion?
Is it possible to convert a traditional IRA to a roth after death of the account holder? I understand it is possible to do a post-death recharacterization, but is a post death conversion possible?
Deceased parent in lower tax bracket than son/daughter beneficiaries.
Anyone that can set this issue straight for me.
Thanks, Doug
Permalink Submitted by Alan Spross on Fri, 2008-06-06 23:10
There is no way this could be done from scratch by non spouse beneficiaries. There have been a few PLRs allowing a spouse to complete a post death rollover, but none to my knowledge have allowed a non spouse to complete a post death rollover of any type. A Roth conversion is reported as a distribution and rollover and a non spouse beneficiary cannot do a rollover in any event.
One situation that might be worth a PLR request would be if the parent opened a Roth IRA titled as a Roth conversion IRA and then died prior to completing the conversion and prior to 60 days. While that would be a long shot it would at least provide evidence of intent to complete a Roth conversion, but of what amount? Most of these are done by direct transfer instead of rollover, which makes even this scenario unlikely to be worth the cost of a letter ruling.