spousal ira
client died and his wife is the beneficiary of his ira. can she move the assets to her existing ira or must they be rolled to a spousal ira?
client died and his wife is the beneficiary of his ira. can she move the assets to her existing ira or must they be rolled to a spousal ira?
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Wed, 2014-06-18 18:02
She can maintain the IRA as beneficiary OR roll it over to her own IRA anytime she wishes. If she is under 59.5, she would probably maintain the IRA as beneficiary so her distributions would not be subject to the 10% penalty, and then roll it over. Or if client was not yet taking RMDs, she could keep it as inherited without any RMD until he would have reached 70.5. But in all other cases, she would be better of rolling it over to her own IRA. She will have to present a death cert and other paperwork to establish that client died before she can make any changes, so custodian will probably make it an inherited IRA first. She can then either continue it, transfer it elsewhere or take a full or partial distribution and roll it over to her name within 60 days.