Non Spouse Beneficiary (less the 10 yrs younger) IRA Funded to Improperly titled IRA

Submitted by Steven Clasen on Tue, 2022-08-30 00:47

Thanks in advance for your input….Unmarried Couple-Spouse Passed away in late 2020 at age 64 and left IRA to unmarried partner (age 58 at the time) . Unmarried Partner less that 10 yrs younger.

Normally this would be easy to deal with. Since the less than 10 yr age difference exception-the unmarried spouse can take over her lifetime – no 10 year payout.

But the IRA account the unmarried spouse added the funds to is her existing IRA account in March 2021. Account titling should have been to a Separate Acct
the Umarried Spouse IRA acct for the benefit of Surviving Unmarried Spouse

We have contacted the IRA custodian and they are not responding to our requests to separate out and retitle the funds.

Any ideas on what paths we need to consider or if their are no options available. Thank you.



Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Tue, 2022-08-30 17:25

  • Assuming that the person you describe as a spouse is actually a non spouse, barring potential common law marriage exceptions, the rollover into the non spouse beneficiary’s existing owned IRA is not allowed and would have to instead be reported as a taxable distribution. The rollover would also be treated as an excess IRA contribution and have to be removed from the owned IRA. 
  • One possible fix to this might be possible if the funds were added by direct transfer (no distribution) to a 0 balance IRA account. That account could then be retitled as an inherited IRA. If a distribution was made OR if the existing IRA had a prior balance, then there is no solution to this error.


Add new comment

Log in or register to post comments