Verifying A Beneficiary on Your IRA Account -Orange County Estate Planning Attorney James F. Roberts
Verifying a Beneficiary on your IRA account
We are often called upon to get involved when there is a difficult, complex, and detailed estate planning issues. It is amazing to us the number of people who have spent a great deal of time setting up a plan and then do not have any beneficiary listed on their 401k or IRA accounts.
We have noticed that this is often due to the fact that we take for granted that we have completed this vital step when creating it or that we have plenty of time to complete this step later. This often leads to being in a bad situation for the family and having to face probate.
An example would be when a 401k or IRA company is bought out by another company and a new beneficiary must be designated. We find often there is a primary beneficiary but not a secondary beneficiary. This can often lead to trouble if the primary beneficiary passes away before the owner and then the company holds the money and it must go through probate incurring all those added expenses rather than passing as the owner would have wanted. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of simply calling the IRA company and verifying a beneficiary on your IRA account and you can avoid a situation where your family faces paying a percentage of what was meant to be theirs in probate fees. Contact us today and set up an appointment.
We offer a many different resources and pamphlets on the subject of creating, updating and implementing estate plans. We also offer a regularly scheduled seminar in our office to help people determine what the best options are for them in their estate planning needs.