Natalie Choate, a member of the firm’s Trusts and Estates Department, was quoted extensively by The Wall Street Journal in “Inherited IRAs: a Sweet Deal” on April 13, 2012. The article discusses the measure proposed by the Senate Finance Committee earlier this year to make heirs empty inherited individual retirement accounts (IRAs) within five years of the death of the benefactor. The measure was subsequently abandoned and the current rules allow heirs to stretch withdrawals from an inherited IRA over their own lifetimes, with the potential for the assets to increase in value over the decades, tax-deferred. “Yet many unwitting families cash out the account, losing the possibility of a life-expectancy payout,” says Natalie. “That is a problem,” she says, “because there is no way to get the money back into the IRA after it has been cashed out.”
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