Inherited IRAs: A Guide for Charities

Any charity would be grateful to be named beneficiary of an Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA). But most organizations that receive such gifts encounter months—even years—of wrangling with custodians to get the funds:

• Endless paperwork booby-trapped with unanswerable yet mandatory questions
• Phone calls with interminable “hold” periods, sometimes punctuated with disconnections
• Mandatory submission of personal data on charity officers or directors, even though those individuals won’t receive the money
• Forced registration of the charity as a customer of the custodian institution and concurrent opening of an IRA in the name of the charity, then a battle to get the funds from the new IRA account.