Orange County Estate Planning Attorney James F. Roberts Discusses things to consider when creating and modifying your estate plan.
Selecting an IRA beneficiary if there is no spouse can mean large tax consequences
The very real issue in estate planning comes when you have to name someone as an IRA beneficiary when there is no spouse. This may be because you never married, divorced, or your spouse passed away, but now you need to have a beneficiary named for your IRA and that means learning what that means from a tax standpoint in order to protect your IRA beneficiaries. A spouse would be allowed to roll over your IRA into their own IRA, but children and other beneficiaries are not given the same option. This is critical because there are major tax consequences for how your IRA beneficiaries chooses to receive the money. Distribution types are a choice IRA beneficiary has that can have wide reaching effects on the amount they pay in taxes and what they ultimately receive. We are doing a series of videos to discuss the best way to plan for an IRA and to make sure that your beneficiaries are protected as much as possible. The government has certain things set up when you pass away, and there are accounts that have not had taxes paid on them.
Follow up with your estate planning attorney to ensure that your estate plan honors your wishes and is set up correctly. 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. We hope you sign up for one of our seminars to help you find your best options. We regularly conduct free seminars designed to teach about the benefits of creating an estate plan. The seminars are held on-site at our Anaheim office inside of our “classroom”.