The wife and I have a Living Trust with all of the other trusts and pour over wills included to take advantage of each’s inheritance tax exemption, whatever that is in the future. The problems I am worried about are: 1) the vast majority of our assets are in either IRA’s or Roth’s with the vast majority of those in one spouse’s accounts and 2) there are trust charitable beneficiaries with contingencies. The layman’s intent of the trust(s) is as follows:

– Each spouse’s maximum inheritance exemption is to be obtained for tax purposes.
– The surviving spouse gets to use any part during their life.
– Each of 3 children are to be guaranteed at least so much at the passing of the surviving spouse before any charitable distributions.
– Each of the children is to be protected by a per stirpes clause.
– After the passing of the last spouse, as long as each child is guaranteed so much, X% of the [b]ENTIRE[/b] estate is be distributed to named or described (certain
types of medical research, say, to be determined by the trustee and trust wording) charities.

[b]Would it be advisable or even feasible to add wording in the trust that:[/b]

– Instructs the surviving spouse to roll over the deceased spouse’s IRA(s) and Roth(s) to their own. [b]How would that be done to preserve the deceased
spouse’s inheritance tax exemption?[/b]
– Instructs the surviving spouse to add named beneficiaries to all remaining IRA’s and Roth’s as follows:
. If the guaranteed amount for each child is below the minimum, add named beneficiaries for the three named children equally (per stirpes) .
. If the guaranteed amount for each child is above the minimum, add named beneficiaries for the three named children equally (per stirpes) and X% to the trust
charities to be administered by the trustee.
– Instruct the trustee at the passing of the last spouse to then split the remaining IRA(s) and Roth(s) within the Federally mandated time period into separate
IRA’s and Roth’s for each resulting named beneficiary to insure that they can “stretch” these accounts to each of their life expectancies.