- Any surviving spouse who is a designated beneficiary may elect to rollover the decedent’s IRA or plan account into their own IRA or plan account.
- A surviving spouse who is the sole designated beneficiary of the decedent’s IRA may elect to treat the decedent’s IRA as their own.
- In the case of the decedent dying before their RBD, the surviving spouse who is the sole beneficiary may delay taking RMDs from the inherited IRA or plan account until the deceased spouse would have turned age 70½.
- If the surviving spouse is the sole beneficiary and holds the decedent’s IRA or plan account as an inherited plan, the surviving spouse uses the attained age method and re-enters the Single Life Table each year.
- Spousal beneficiaries of Roth IRAs who rollover or treat the decedent’s Roth IRA as their own are not required to take RMDs during their lifetime.
Planning Point: No Rollovers for Non-Spouse Beneficiaries
A non-spouse beneficiary of a qualified plan or IRA is prohibited from rolling over an inherited account into their own name. They may, however, do a trustee-to-trustee transfer of such funds to an inherited IRA account that is titled as such – in the name of the decedent for the benefit of the beneficiary. RMDs must continue to be taken from the new inherited account.
In our next blogpost, we will introduce a case study about RMD.