Husband and wife couple are reviewing/revising their Living trust and trusts for children.
Living trust has house and brokerage assets that have been titled to the trust. At first death these assets get split 50/50 between survivors trust and Qtip which has some re-marriage pre-nup clauses to protect the interests of the deceased’s remainder beneficiary designation (ie children 50/50) . So far so good and all guaranteed to happen just like the deceased intended.
The other half of the couple’s assets are made up of roll/over IRA’s. Half belonging to husband and half to wife with each other as primary beneficiaries and two trusts for children as contingent beneficiaries with 50/50 split.
The mess is the IRA’s.. as they are not titled to the living trust what is to stop the survivor from inheriting the IRA from the deceased spouse and then changing the beneficiaries to someone else or just as bad going off on a spending spree and returning with no IRA at all. Sure the spouse is entitled to half and RMD’s for life but not all (unless required for HEM’s which is remote).

Question.
1) Am I understanding the problem correctly? Does every couple with IRA’s potentially have this issue of post death changes to named remainder/contingent beneficiary? Although it may not be be viewed as an issue by most and is probably remote.
2)To protect/guarantee the children’s opportunity to ultimately receive 50% of the IRA’s after 2nd to die, could the couple somehow title the IRA’s in some way that on first to die would cause both IRA’s to be divided 50/50 with half placed in the survivors trust and half in a qtip with the survivor entitled to the RMD’s and the children entitled to the remainder on the death of the survivor?
3)Any trust tax issues?
4) Other solutions to make the IRA’s behave like assets in the living trust?
why are IRA’s such a pain.?
Thanks