10-Year or Can We Somehow Stretch Over Life of Spouse?

Hello and thank you in advance for your input! Husband and wife both 73 and in RMD stage. Husband dies in freak auto accident. No beneficiary was named so his pour over will sent the account to the bypass trust (as opposed to surviving spouse). Not sure why this was the path they took but regardless. It appears they did not take a distribution for 2022. And they need to know what they need to take moving forward. The current balance is $125,500, of which $25,500 is in cash. The rest is tied up in a self-storage/real estate deal. They plan to give any distributions to the surviving spouse. So the spouse will get the distributions and then the kids will receive the rest once she dies. It’s a look through trust, the beneficiaries are identifiable but it seems the 10 year rule would apply regardless for the kids. I guess the amount should be what the husband was taking for surviving spouse, or is it possible to stretch out for wife’s life and then on her death the 10 year rule begins? Thank you!



  • If the trust was not named on the IRA agreement the estate is the beneficiary and the trust is not qualified for look through when receiving the IRA through a pour over will.  Therefore, RMDs will be based on the remaining single life table LE of husband. At age 73, this will actually be a longer stretch than the 10 year rule. I don’t know if there is any way around the estate staying open to receive these distributions however before passing them through to the trust. 
  • If husband passed in 2023, it does not matter that the 2022 RMD was missed as beneficiaries are only responsible for the year of death RMD. 
  • Longer term, they will have to create liquidity in the IRA to meet annual RMDs.
  • The IRA balance is probably too small to warrant filing a PLR request to get the proceeds to the spouse and the trust document may not provide that flexibility to begin with. This sounds like an estate plan that was done many years ago and never updated.

With enough disclaimers it may be possible to get the benefits to the spouse who could then do a rollover.  See my articles on this in the October 1997 issue of Estate Planning, https://www.kkwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/AR20050125164755.pdf, and in the June 2015 issue of Trusts & Estates, https://www.kkwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/IRA-Rollovers-Making-this-option-possible.pdf .Bruce SteinerKleinberg, Kaplan, Wolff & Cohen, P.C.

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