ROTH IRAS primary beneficiaries

Submitted by Richard Partin on Sat, 2013-12-28 15:54

I have numerous roth iras. With my wife’s permission I put my two sons as the primary ben. and the wife secen. If I know that my wife will leave my roth iras to my sons, would it be better to have my wife as the primary bene?



Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Sat, 2013-12-28 19:27

  • It depends on who you want to protect the most and/or who needs the funds the most and/or who is capable of handling the account correctly. If your wife is made the primary beneficiary, when she inherits the Roth she can assume ownership and will not have any RMDs to take. Although you want her to name your sons as her beneficiary, you must assess the chance that she will not do that or neglect to name her own beneficiary at all.
  • With your sons as primary at the present time, they will inherit and must start RMDs using their single life expectancy.
  • In either of the cases above, the primary could elect to file a qualified disclaimer of all or part of the death benefit and the disclaimed portion will pass to the secondary beneficiaries. Perhaps they would disclaim and perhaps not.
  • Or you could split up your different Roth accounts and name different primary beneficiaries on them. That would assure all 3 parties that they would get something immediately after your passing. You could put the others on as secondary beneficiaries to keep open the option for disclaimers that would transfer a particular Roth to the secondary beneficiaries.


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