Apr 1, 2010 12:00 PM

Chase Away IRA Spousal Rollover Demons

Stop raising Treasury regulations as a barrier when a trust or estate is the named beneficiary. Here's why

When IRA custodians get nervous, they often need a private letter ruling to calm them down and tell them that what they're doing — or planning to do — is just fine. And that's what's happened over the past eight years in the context of whether to permit surviving spouses to make IRA rollovers when a trust or estate is named as the IRA beneficiary. Favorable PLRs. Lots of them. Over 75 of them since the final regulations governing required minimum distributions (RMDs) were promulgated in 2002. PLRs involving not only IRAs under Internal Revenue Code Section 408, but also under other types of retirement plans under IRC Sections 401 and 403(B). All saying the same thing: Surviving spouses can make IRA rollovers, even though a trust or estate is named as the retirement plan beneficiary, as long as the surviving spouse is the “real” beneficiary. The surviving spouse is treated as the “real” IRA beneficiary when the surviving spouse holds all the strings needed to gain unfettered access to the decedent's IRA and then pulls those strings.1

Then why the concern?

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