Spouse not Sole Beneficiary

Submitted by Kevin O'Hearn on Wed, 2018-07-11 15:17

Hello, if a wife is listed as 50/50 beneficiary on her husbands IRA, if the husband passes away can the wife treat the assets as her own or can she only treat them as there own if she is listed as the sole beneficiary?



Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Wed, 2018-07-11 17:12

  • She cannot elect to assume ownership of the inherited account unless she is the sole beneficiary. However, she can take a distribution and roll it over to her own IRA as a 60 day rollover except for any amount that is an RMD for that year. If husband passed after his RBD, the spouse and other beneficiary are jointly responsible for completing the year of death RMD. It is also possible that the surviving spouse in some cases would be under 59.5 and would then do a direct trustee transfer to an inherited IRA so she could take penalty free distributions before 59.5. 
  • While the IRS has clarified this, I see no reason that if the other beneficiary did a transfer of their share to a separate inherited IRA by 9/30 of the year following owner’s death leaving only the surviving spouse as beneficiary on the remaining balance, that the surviving spouse could not then be treated as the sole beneficiary and elect to assume ownership of the inherited IRA.

Add new comment

Log in or register to post comments