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Orange County California

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It may make sense for a trust to be a beneficiary of an IRA account, but never the owner. Here Attorney James Roberts discusses the importance of planning to make sure that you get the best benefit of all your assets in your estate plan.

Often people think that because their major asset that they want to make sure if protected when creating a living is their IRA or retirement account. They often think they need to move their IRA into the trust, and make the trust the owner of the IRA account.

One major thing that people need to realize is that if you were to change your IRA account or other retirement account over to a trust as ownership, that would be a taxable event. This is because an IRA account means individual retirement account, not a trust retirement account and the tax ramifications from making such changes would be large.

The real issue is who should be the beneficiary of the IRA account, and how to best optimize that asset to benefit your family and loved ones. This means looking at if the trust should be the beneficiary or should the trust be the beneficiary. This will depend entirely on your personal circumstances and your wishes.

Please feel free to reach out to us by phone at (714) 282-7488 or contact us here. We also welcome you to attend our monthly seminar we offer free of charge to those interested in learning more about the best way to meet their estate planning needs.

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