Optimizing IRAs and Retirement Plan DistributionsOptimizing IRAs and Retirement Plan Distributions

In my article in the September 2014 issue of Trusts & Estates,¹ I discussed how marriage affects the Social Security benefits available to a couple addressing their retirement and estate-planning options. Let’s expand on that idea and see what happens to retirement plans and individual retirement accounts when a couple marries. There can be significant advantages if your client leaves an IRA or retirement plan to his spouse, as opposed to his unmarried partner. 

Table 1 vs. Table III

Traditionally, married couples have always enjoyed the security of knowing that they have the ability to extend the tax deferral of their deceased spouse’s retirement accounts by doing a trustee-to-trustee transfer or rolling them into their own IRA. For exam...