When to satisfy deceased owners RMD
IRA owner passed prior to satisfying the 2018 RMD. Spouse looking to transfer the IRA into her own and treating as her own. Once the transfer is complete, the spouse was then going to satisfy the owners 2018 RMD. Would there be any issues with this?
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Mon, 2018-05-14 16:15
No issues. The surviving spouse cannot take a distribution without first having the IRA retitled. In most cases the election to become the owner is best, but if the surviving spouse was under 59.5, they would probably leave all or part of the IRA titled in beneficiary form. Either way, the year of death RMD can be distributed anytime before year end either to the beneficiary or the new owner. There are also many situations where the year of death RMD is late, and in that case as long as the beneficiary takes the distributions ASAP and files a 5329, the IRS will almost always waive any penalty.