In a community property state, the spouse of the participant has a legal right to claim 1/2 of an IRA as his or her community property if it was funded with community earnings. In Ed’s article in Financial Planning Magazine’s October 2016 issue, he mentions that ERISA trumps community property and discusses some problems that could come from that.

If an IRA participant wanted to leave assets to someone other than the spouse, would the safe bet be to name “the spouse as a 50% beneficiary as her community property” and then name anyone else as the beneficiary(ies) of the remaining 50% without fear of additional challenges under community property law?