DESIGNATED IRA BENEFICIARIES

By Wayne Locke- CFP®

Good day,

I wanted to share another article from the Slott Report by Jim Glass about the importance of naming a designated beneficiary in an IRA. An IRA can be inherited by a beneficiary that is legal entity, such as a charity or an estate, but a “designated beneficiary” must be a living person who is named on the beneficiary form of an IRA.

Naming a designated beneficiary has some major advantages:

• Distributions from inherited IRAs can be stretched over a designated beneficiary's lifetime, possibly allowing decades of tax-favored investment returns to be earned in the IRA.
• The IRA passes directly to a designated beneficiary, escaping complications like probate.

I recommend taking a look at the full article, which you can find here. By naming a designated beneficiary, you can allow your heirs to take advantage of years of tax favored payouts as well as avoiding needless probate court costs and headaches.

Cheers!