If a payer of a restorative payment for a settlement for a retirement account is unwilling to commit to how they will report it before the payee contributes it to their retirement account, is there an approproach the payee could take to mitigate this? Add to that the payer may also not work with payee later to correct the way they report it.

Would it work for payee to deposit as a rollover and then to use form 4852 to file a 1099R if payer doesn’t and won’t report a 1099R?

Would it work to have the new custodian treat as a transfer and if a 1099R gets reported then do a correction to the 5498 to treat it as a rollover contribution?

Can non-custodians file a 1099R (for example, a company that holds assets for a retirement account but isn’t the custodian)?

Thank you for your help!