trust beneficiary of retirement plan

[Scuba 401]

might be a silly question but the participant dies  with a trust as beneficiary  the check is payable to   jack smith as trustee of the john doe trust  fbo jane doe IRA does the trustee take the check and deposit in the trust or can an IRA be opened and that check be deposited directly?

[JOH]

I'm a little confused, why the check would include Jane Doe's IRA? If the trust is the beneficiary of the IRA it should be payable to the Trust. Obviously if there are other factors than I can see the payment going to the spouse's IRA. Is the Trust a Qualifying Trust and is it a see-through trust?

[Luke Bailey]

Scuba 401, I'd love to try to provide some insight, but so far, for the info you have provided, I think JOH has nailed it.

[Scuba 401]

14 hours ago, JOH said:

I'm a little confused, why the check would include Jane Doe's IRA? If the trust is the beneficiary of the IRA it should be payable to the Trust. Obviously if there are other factors than I can see the payment going to the spouse's IRA. Is the Trust a Qualifying Trust and is it a see-through trust?

is the determining factor if its a conduit trust you can make the payments directly to an IRA vs accumulation trust you make the payments directly to the trust?

[JOH]

Not necessarily. The first question I ask is if the Trust is qualifying trust. If it is than you have to see how the beneficiaries of the Trust is set up. Are there sub-trust involved or is it a see-through to a person as bene, etc... If the Trust is not a non-qualifying trust, then you wouldn't be able to rollover to an IRA. I would recommend that they work with an ERISA attorney to determine if the Trust is a qualifying or non-qualifying trust and if it meets the requirements to see-through to a spousal beneficiary (as a person) to be able to do an assumption or rollover. Again, there are many factors regarding this.