RMD Post SECURE ACT Trust with Spouse as sole beneficiary
Taxpayer having taken their 2023 RMD, then died in November 2023 leaving IRA in trust for his spouse who is sole beneficiary as long as she is alive. Taxpayer was RMD age (86) and had been taking RMDs.
Spouse is age 72 in 2025.
Does the Trust have to take an RMD in 2025 or since the spouse was the sole beneficiary while alive of the Trust she can treat as her own and delay taking RMD until she turns age 73 ?
If RMD is required how is it calculated?
How are subsequent years RMD’s calculated?
Thanks
Howard
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Tue, 2025-06-17 22:03
The answer is complex, depending on the exact trust provisions.
The RMD rules depend on whether the trust is qualified for look through or not, and the payout instructions. If qualified, is the trust a conduit trust or an accumulation trust? If an accumulation trust, the remainder (countable) beneficiaries would have to be determined and will affect the RMD divisor if they are older.
If a conduit trust with the spouse as the sole conduit beneficiary (trust states that all distributions made must be passed through to the surviving spouse annually), the RMD divisor is based on the Uniform Table (per Secure 2.0) if the trustee of the trust makes this election with the IRA custodian. In this case, the surviving spouse would have the same RMD divisor as if they had been able to do the spousal rollover out of the trust to their own IRA.
The surviving spouse may also be able to do the spousal rollover if the trust provisions allow the trustee to assign the IRA out of the trust, but this would also require the IRA custodian to cooperate with an assignment request.
Finally, what distributions were made in 2024? There should have been an RMD distribution based on the same variables as above.