inherited IRA(non-spousal) options

.........If you truly fear massive screw-ups by custodians, I wonder how fearful you are of far more likely situations happening.

I take precautions like everybody does, and then I make decisions that are appropriate for me. Yes I do think that asking the customer service manager to transfer an amount from one account to another internally in the bank with a printout after the transaction shoeing the new balance is safer that doing it online.

I don't fear massive screw-ups. I just deal with it as I do. Please don't take offense because my choices are not the same as your choices. I really do appreciate your input in this matter.

And us retired folk(with stable incomes) tend to be a little bit more concerned about maintaining principle than people who have an income that is rising, and plenty of time to recover from screw-ups.

It is just what it just is.
 
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SA- The only thing that I would add to this discussion is to find somebody that understands the nuances associated with the BDA IRAs. This is an area where the big players (such as Fidelity or Vangaurd) may have an advantage.

I have a small inherited IRA at Fidelity, and it is quite easy to manage. The process of transferring it from Wells Fargo to Fidelity was straight forward- much easier than dealing with Wells Fargo. Also, I don't think anyone else has mentioned it- if you inherited two different IRAs, they must always be kept separate. You can not roll them into an existing IRA, or combine two inherited IRAs into one. There are some very specific rules about how they must be treated.
 
SA- The only thing that I would add to this discussion is to find somebody that understands the nuances associated with the BDA IRAs. This is an area where the big players (such as Fidelity or Vangaurd) may have an advantage.

Our experience thus far with Vanguard has been dismal. After having been notified of the deaths and the will, it took them more than a year to break the original IRA into 3 beneficiary IRAs

12 months! Now that's service I want to keep!
 
Our experience thus far with Vanguard has been dismal. After having been notified of the deaths and the will, it took them more than a year to break the original IRA into 3 beneficiary IRAs



12 months! Now that's service I want to keep!


Odd. We had an IRA split into 3 beneficiary IRAs at Vanguard and it was done quickly. My third is still at Vanguard and I've had no problems. Each year, they calculate my RMD, which I take at the beginning of the year. Sorry to hear you haven't been as lucky.
 
Odd. We had an IRA split into 3 beneficiary IRAs at Vanguard and it was done quickly. My third is still at Vanguard and I've had no problems. Each year, they calculate my RMD, which I take at the beginning of the year. Sorry to hear you haven't been as lucky.

Maybe its just me....

About a decade ago, we bought a house, and needed to close down our Swiss Annuity account(no surrender fees applied) and have the money transferred back into my bank to pay for the down payment.

We had been drawing down the annuity for college educations for awhile. There was no penalty for taking out anything up to the original amount put into it, and despite their prostrations that it would grow by 6% a year it had only grown 2% in the 5 years we had it.

So we called a company called J Jurg Lattman and talked to Nicole who was our manager for this. Lattman was handling the transfer operations for La Swisse Insurance Corporation and other management for the insurance company. Nicole politely informed me that La Swisse decided they didn't want to pay Lattman anymore and would do it themselves, and gave me their number direct.

So I called them. They were friendly and asked for the wire transfer number and I gave it to them. There was dead silence. I asked them what was wrong and they said that their form only had boxes for 9 numbers---which meant that they couldn't wire anything out Europe.

For the next 6 weeks I talked with and emailed increasingly higher ups in the company until I eventually reached the president. No one could do anything. I would get these cc messages from the higher ups telling the lowers to get me off their back, but the lowers could do nothing because their form could not be changed because the computers would only recognize 9 numbers.

I thought I was going to have to fly over there.

Finally I had a bright idea. I went to my local bank branch manager and asked if they didn't have a corresponding bank in Zurich. Of course they did, and sure they could have opened an account for me in it, but that was only for million dollar plus bank deposits. But they made an exception for me, and it turned out that the corresponding bank in Zurich was literally next door to the La Swisse Insurance company. And I had my money in less than 2 days.

Funny now 9 years later. Exasperating then. Typical of dealing with banks brokerage houses, etc. If you haven't had a glitch like this yet, eventually, when you can least use it, you will.

When I tell this story in any finance discussion group like this, there is always dead silence. Nobody ever comments. I think they believe I'm making it up!

You don't want to know how my entire family shunned me and my wife and kids 21 years ago due to an inheritance that they didn't get because they were ungodly mean to the person for many years, and I was just nice to her.

So maybe these money matters only happen to me and not to other people. I've learned that for me, Murphy's Law counts. I'm so familiar with Murphy that I know him by his first name(which is Edward, BTW: google it)
 
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Typical of dealing with banks brokerage houses, etc. If you haven't had a glitch like this yet, eventually, when you can least use it, you will.

Sorry you had such a frustrating experience, but I doubt many here share your expectation of a similar experience. International banking transactions add a level of complexity and I've never seen any reason to risk having issues like you experienced by investing/insuring anywhere other than through US financial institutions.
 
Our experience thus far with Vanguard has been dismal. After having been notified of the deaths and the will, it took them more than a year to break the original IRA into 3 beneficiary IRAs

12 months! Now that's service I want to keep!

I can actually believe this because my sister and I had a similar experience when my dad passed. It wasn't 12 months - but it was 4 months and required multiple copies of the certified death certificate because they kept losing the paperwork and death certificates. My sister was the executor and was ready to pull her hair out. I got my turn to deal with them....when I needed to update the 529's my dad had started for my sons (with me as beneficiary) - again, they kept losing the death certificates and paperwork. Since the 529 department is a separate group from the rest of Vanguard they could "see" that Vanguard had recognized my dad's death - but they needed their own copies of the death certificate to lose multiple times.

Vanguard is great when you're alive - but they don't always handle death well.
 
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