Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits

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52 Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits
be considered his RBD when determining whether he died before or after his RBD
for purposes of computing post-death RMDs. See B).
Step 4: Are you computing the RMD for the year of death, or for a later year? If you are
computing the RMD for the year of the participant’s death, see A) (if participant
died before his RBD) A) (if participant died on or after his RBD), and A)
(if there are multiple beneficiaries); and skip the rest of thi If you are computing
RMDs for years AFTER the year of the participant’s death, go on to Step 5.
Step 5: Are there are multiple beneficiaries? If there are multiple beneficiaries, you need to
determine whether the “separate accounts rule” applies for purposes of determining the
beneficiaries’ ADPs. See B). If the beneficiaries’ interests constitute separate
accounts for ADP purposes, then the beneficiary (and resulting ADP) are determined
separately for each such separate account and the distribution options described in
B)–(F) o B)–(F) (whichever is applicable) apply to each separate account.
If there are multiple beneficiaries whose interests do not qualify as separate accounts for
ADP purposes, then the distribution options are as described at F) or F),
whichever is applicable.
Step 6: Do the benefits pass to a Designated Beneficiary, and if so who? See for the
definition of Designated Beneficiary. Note that the identity of the beneficiary is not finally
fixed, for purposes of these rules, until September 30 of the year following the year of the
participant’s death; see Accordingly, the “quiz answers” in B)–(F) or
B)–(F) apply once the identity of the beneficiary is finalized on September 30 of the
year following the year of the participant’s death. Your choices for completing Step 6 are:
the participant’s surviving spouse ; an individual who is not the participant’s
surviving spouse ; a see-through trust ; an estate, non-see-through trust,
or other nonindividual beneficiary ; and multiple beneficiaries (i.e., any
combination of the foregoing) .
Step 7: Compute the RMDs:
If the beneficiary is ... ...and the participant died
before the RBD, see:
...and the participant died
after the RBD, see:
Year of participant’s death:
Any beneficiary N/A; no RMD A). A).
Later years:
The participant’s surviving
spouse
B) B)
An individual (not the
surviving spouse)
C) C)