Spousal IRA

[MudDuck]

I'm not even sure whether this is a tax question, really...

What I want to do is transfer some of the money from my traditional IRA to open another traditional IRA with my spouse's name and SSN. Can this be done in such a way that it's a qualified transfer/rollover/whatever the term is, rather than an early (taxable) withdrawal?

[dandarc]

First answer on google says only in the case of death or divorce:

http://finance.zacks.com/can-ira-transferred-spouse-spouse-5473.html

I'm curious why you want to do this?  You can open an IRA for your wife anytime for new contributions.

[MudDuck]

I was hoping Google was wrong, as it so often is. We have very different birth years, so I thought it would be nice to have a more even spread between our accounts. The reason I wanted to take some from mine to open the account is that the contribution amount allowed per year is only $5500.

[thingamabobs]

It's 5500/year per person, so if you've already maxed out your account you can still contribute to the spousal.

[MDM]

Worried about RMDs from your account and the tax bite taken?  If so, have you considered some amount of Roth conversion each year to reduce that bite overall?

[terran]

Worried about RMDs from your account and the tax bite taken?  If so, have you considered some amount of Roth conversion each year to reduce that bite overall?

If this is the concern, then I also believe the RMD schedule is different when one spouse is significantly younger (at least 10 years I think).

[dandarc]

Worried about RMDs from your account and the tax bite taken?  If so, have you considered some amount of Roth conversion each year to reduce that bite overall?

If this is the concern, then I also believe the RMD schedule is different when one spouse is significantly younger (at least 10 years I think).

Here's the relevant table for spouses with significantly different ages.  http://individual.troweprice.com/staticFiles/Retail/Shared/PDFs/JointLifeExpectancyTable.pdf

[MudDuck]

Thanks, everyone!