There Were So Many Simpler Ways to Do This

[billroper]

My father died in December, 1999 and left his three children as trustees (with me the lead steer) for his living trust. The will basically locked up all of the money (and the house) to be used to support his widow, Connie, for as long as she lives and doesn't remarry. Whatever is left over when she dies goes to the kids and the grandkids. (Of course, Connie's only about seven years older than I am, so that's likely to be a while.)

Almost all of the liquid assets were in the form of a Roth IRA which my dad had set up in April, 1998. This meant that they couldn't be touched without potentially nasty tax consequences before April, 2003. (No one was quite sure what the tax consequences were exactly, because there hadn't been that many people die with substantial Roth IRAs, so erring on the side of safety seemed best.) As a result, my brother and I ended up loaning a substantial amount of money to the estate to keep it afloat -- i.e., pay Connie's stipend from the trust -- which we finally got back this year.

Dad also left Connie a life estate in the house in Belleville. Unfortunately, Connie didn't actually want to live there and the property was deteriorating from lack of attention. The only way to cut the Gordian Knot was to give Connie the house so that she can sell it and buy a home in Kansas City where her relatives live. This also meant that I was no longer responsible for the house, which is a good thing. As part of that negotiation, we agreed to turn the trust over to a financial manager, which we've also done, getting another set of decisions off my plate. (So far, so good.)

When I was walking around Sam's Club this weekend, I suddenly realized that it's five years after my dad died. I recalled reading some IRS regulations about having to liquidate that Roth IRA, so I called the financial manager this morning and spoke to her. She hasn't had to deal with this issue yet either and is bucking it up the chain, but it looks like -- based on some reading that I did on the IRS web site -- that we don't have to break the Roth IRA open until the end of the fifth year following the year that my father died, which would be -- oh, crap! I just counted on my fingers and got the right answer -- December 31, 2004.

Which means that we'd better get this sorted out now. *sigh*

Comments

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

You've got 4 days. No stress at all.

I feel your pain

[daddy-guido.livejournal.com]

I just spent a year and a half going to monthly court hearings to sort out how about 180K that got "found" in a safe deposit box of my late great aunt was going to be distributed.

you see, she was a ward of the state - which meant that everything that she had was supposed to be liquidated. which it was. we thought.

a few weeks after she died, another aunt "found" $180k worth of savings bonds in a safe deposit box no one else knew about. Oops.
Well the State had coughed up about 30k for her care, and they wanted that, and the will specified all of her estate to be split among her surviving 13 brothers and sisters of which exactly one is left living.

So, easy, right? pay off the state, and give the rest of the cash to her sister.

except.

all of the bonds were co-owned by a secondary owner in a POD (pay on the death of) arrangement. So, no problem, get the co-owner to sign off, pay off the state, and give the money to the co-owner, right?

except.

There were actually 17 named co-owners, each with different amounts on their bonds purchased over a period of 30 years, with the various people being spread across 4 countries.

no problem.

except.

the court wasn't sure who was entitled to the money, in what share, and in what order, so it took 1.5 years to do it the "short" way, with all the parties in agreement, including the state, and after 18 court appearences i got my whopping share - about 3 grand.

I feel your pain.

Re: I feel your pain

[billroper]

Yow! Ok, that's a winner.