Beneficiary IRA Rollover when younger spouse dies first

Submitted by David Rains on Wed, 2017-05-17 21:05

Wife is now 81 years old. Her husband died in 2009 when he was 62 and the wife was 73. The wife did not treat the husband’s traditional IRA as her own after he died and she has not been taking RMD’s from this inherited IRA account. In 2018 the husband will have been 70 1/2 and since the spouse beneficiary did not elect to roll the IRA over or treat it as her own she must use the single life table to compute the RMD from this inherited IRA. The single life table produces a much larger RMD for the spouse compared to the uniform table that the spouse is currently using on her own IRA account.
If the wife rolls over the inherited IRA to her own account in 2017, is her previously calculated RMD for 2017 affected?
Is she required to take an RMD from the inherited IRA account prior to rolling it over to her own IRA?

Thank you,



Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Thu, 2017-05-18 03:08

  • Since husband would not have reached 70.5 in 2017, no part of a distribution from the inherited IRA is an RMD and therefore the entire distribution (or the entire account) can be rolled over into surviving spouse’s own IRA in 2017 without affecting the RMD of the surviving spouse’s own IRAs.
  • While I have never seen this distinction pointed out, I interpret the following portion of Reg 1.408-8, Q 5 (next bullet point)  as determining a different result if the wife were to elect to treat the inherited IRA as her own in 2017. She would be treated as owning this account the entire year and would also have an RMD due for 2017 as the owner (Uniform Table) using the 12/31/2016 balance. Therefore, she should take the distribution and roll it over, not treat the inherited IRA as her own:
  • “.If the surviving spouse makes the election, the required minimum distribution for the calendar year of the election and each subsequent calendar year is determined under section 401(a)(9)(A) with the spouse as IRA owner and not section 401(a)(9)(B) with the surviving spouse as the deceased IRA owner‘s beneficiary.”

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