Your plan custodian or administrator would almost certainly advise against it. That’s because the IRS considers retitling a plan the same as a 100% withdrawal for tax purposes.
How Do Living Trusts Work?
A living trust is a legal entity set up to hold property for eventual distribution to your beneficiaries. You can create one during your lifetime; it can be either revocable or irrevocable. In either case, you would transfer ownership of your assets into the trust’s name after it’s created, which more or less makes your trust the new, current owner of the assets. Revocable trusts offer the most flexibility because you can name yourself as trustee. That means you manage the property and income produced by the trust during your lifetime. You can name a successor trustee to take over should you become incapacitated, or upon your death. The successor trustee would then transfer ownership of the trust’s assets to your beneficiaries according to your trust documents. Forming an irrevocable trust requires that you forever give up all control over the assets you place into the trust’s name. Unlike a revocable trust, which you can dissolve if you see fit, you give up this right when you form an irrevocable trust. You must name someone else as trustee.
Moving Your Plan Into Your Trust
According to the IRS, changing the owner of your IRA or 401(k), even to the name of your trust, is equivalent to a 100% withdrawal from the account. It’s no different from retitling it in the name of your child or any other relative rather than naming them as a beneficiary. You must report the entire value of the account on your tax return in the year you make the change. It will all be taxed as part of your income on that year’s tax return.
What Are Your Other Options?
You might want to think about changing the beneficiaries on your plan to align with your estate planning goals. That could be a better option than changing the actual owner of your IRA or 401(k) from you to your trust. You might want to work with an estate planner or lawyer to accomplish this. It all depends on the size of your IRA or 401(k) and the details of your estate plan.
How a Spousal Rollover Works
Naming your trust as a beneficiary of your retirement funds can also have negative consequences, but there’s a way to direct the funds to your spouse while leaving your trust out of it. You can roll the retirement account over to your spouse under special IRS rules. Your spouse can then roll it over to younger heirs at the time of their death. Your heirs would use their dates of birth for required distributions; thus, they could stretch the tax consequences out for many more years. It could go on for generations.
The Bottom Line
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was passed in 1974 to protect retirement plans against misappropriation. It’s meant to ensure that your money will still be there waiting for you when you retire. ERISA-qualified retirement plans are subject to many interacting and complicated rules, particularly when they’re passed as inheritances. Certain actions that you might take with them can’t be undone later if you realize that you’ve made a mistake, so it’s extremely important to get expert advice before you act.
