Beneficiary

5 Ways to Avoid the Time and Expense of Probate

Death is inevitable. It comes for us all at one point or another. Some sooner than later, but none are able to escape its grasp. Whenever that time comes, your “stuff,” including your financial assets, generally live on, and are still essentially yours until they are legally transferred to another person or entity. That transference of assets can occur in any number of ways, but often includes a process known as probate.

Your 2016 H-O-L-I-D-A-Y Season Action Plan

H – Have your financial institutions send you a copy of the beneficiary information they have on file for you. On more than a few occasions, we’ve seen financial institutions lose copies of beneficiary forms (or in some really egregious cases, destroy them). Asking for this information annually helps ensure that there are no surprises when you’re no longer here. The beneficiary form is the most important document when it comes to your retirement account. Therefore, even though it may seem monotonous to check these forms year after year – especially if you haven’t made any changes – it’s worth the effort.

Bene Missed First RMD

What happens when a beneficiary misses their first RMD? IRS answered this question recently in Information Letter 2016-0071 in response to an inquiry. The question was if the 5-year rule was automatically required when a non-spouse beneficiary named on the beneficiary form missed their first required minimum distribution (RMD) in the year after the death of a Roth IRA owner. As unbelievable as it may seem, IRS had never before directly addressed the issue of a beneficiary missing their first RMD.

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