POA & Beneficiaries
All,
Guidance would be much appreciated regarding the following scenario:
An incapciated IRA owner signed a POA during an IRA trustee-trustee transfer
The (new) custodian accepted the transfer (that did not include the account owners signature)
The account owner has now passed away.
The custodian is not accepitng the benficiary forms as the account owner did not sign (the POA did).
Instead the custodian has stated the beneficiary is now the estate.
Thoughts.
Again thank you,
Brian
Permalink Submitted by mk foss on Wed, 2012-02-29 18:32
The POA signature should be just as good as the IRA owners for transferring an account and naming beneficiaries. If the POA didn’t have any restrictions (some do not allow the power holder to change beneficiaries), there should not be a problem. I think you should ask to be connected with the legal department of the custodian or at least the supervisor of each person you talk to that says it cannot be done. It doesn’t make sense that they would open an account with a POA then declare it invalid for naming beneficiaries. If the person was still alive, you could use the POA to transfer to another custodian, but the POA expired when the IRA owner did.
Permalink Submitted by Jose Morales on Thu, 2012-03-01 16:42
Just to clarify, was the beneficiary designation made before the IRA owner passed away?