Search the Community

Can an estate directly transfer defined contribution retirement plan accounts to inherited IRAs benefiting the estate's beneficiaries in a manner similar to direct transfers from IRAs held by estates? In PLR 201208039 the IRS permitted an estate that was the sole named beneficiary of an IRA to make direct trustee to trustee transfers into separate inherited IRAs (one for each of the estate's beneficiaries). The transfers did not constitue taxable distributons and the beneficiaries were able to defer required minimum distributions over the remaining life expectancy of the decedent. It would be very helpful if similar direct IRA transfers were permitted for defined contribution retirement plans. However, it appears that estates are not permitted to transfer (rollover) retirement plan accounts under Tax Code Section 402©(11)(A) because estates do not qualify as individual designated beneficiaries under Tax Code Section 401(a)(9)(E).

Hello all and thank you for taking the time to look at this. I am hopeful that somebody reading this might have the information that I need to make the right decisions. I'll try to keep this as condensed as possible, so there may be important details I've missed. Please ask if you need more detail. The details: wife is fired by employer with 403b (2009) wife has cancer and short time to live ( diagnosed Jan2010 - deceased Mar 2011) wife has daughter from previous marriage wife asks me to sign spousal consent form to transfer 403b to IRA with XYZ Bank (around Dec 2010) I ask bank rep the following two questions - 1) will I remain the beneficiary - answer Yes 2) will it continue to require my signature to change the beneficiary info after converted to IRA - answer Yes I sign a document titled Spousal Consent - from what I recall on the doc there was no information regarding death, or giving up rights, basically a document saying that we the bank want to manage this account to provide you the best returns blah blah blah. I later discover on an IRA statement that the wife has changed beneficiary to the daughter my copy of what was signed goes missing (daughter suspected) I call the bank rep - rep won't talk to me I go to the bank - they won't talk to me (not a named beneficiary) try to get copy of signed Spousal Consent to see what it says from bank, ex-employer, two 403b funds (Vanguard, Fidelity) - no success my attorney ask the bank for copy of document from the bank and they tell him they have no copy of any documents ever signed by me as part of the ongoing estate battle - the daughter (also executrix and beneficiary of bank accounts, land, life insurance, ...) supposedly looks into this and also cannot get any documents from the bank or funds - according to her lawyer I have looked at multiple Spousal Consent forms from my employer and online source and universally, they all have language in them that clearly state you may be giving up your rights to the money, etc. The document I signed had nothing like that (from what I recall). Clearly I knew wife was going to die and tried to carefully review the consent form for any similar language and nothing raised any flags. I continue to believe that the bank rep has a fiduciary responsibility to me as a beneficiary to inform me accurately about the impact of the transfer to IRA. Is all hope lost? I have had a very difficult time finding anyone well versed in this subject - please help.