Can an estate be a designated beneficiary of an IRA?

An estate can’t be a designated beneficiary because it doesn’t have a quantifiable life expectancy ( Treasury Regulations Section 1.401 (a) (9)-4, Q&A 3). Accordingly, if an estate is named as beneficiary of an IRA, distributions must be taken out pursuant to the five-year rule if the IRA owner died before his RBD.

What happens if an estate is the beneficiary of an IRA?

When an estate is the beneficiary of an IRA, account assets will be distributed to the estate, and estate heirs will share them based on the IRA owner's will.

What happens if a beneficiary inherited an IRA?

Note that the old rules that allowed a beneficiary who inherited an IRA to stretch out withdrawals over decades in some cases, are still in place if the person who owned the account died before Jan. 1, 2020. Some beneficiaries of IRA accounts whose owners died in 2020 or later are exempted from the 10-year rule.