Twice the fun

Today's lesson: If a spouse doesn't inherit the deceased spouse's IRA before he himself dies, the IRA cannot be transferred to the subsequent beneficiaries without going through probate. I'm now left wondering what other glitches we'll come across because Dad died prior to "officially" inheriting anything that belonged to Mom.

Mom died in late March. We observed the traditional seven days of shiva. We were in mourning. On the day after we got up from shiva, I asked Dad whom we needed to notify about Mom's death (besides the obvious friends and family who were notified prior to the funeral). He said we had time. A few days later I asked, "Don't we need to call a lawyer or something?" His response was, "We have time."

Ten days later, Dad was in the hospital battling cancer. I asked the same question again and would get the same response. Over the next few months, I asked the question again and always got the same response. I trusted my dad, I figured he knew what he was doing. And it seemed like we had time. Mom's social security had stopped coming in as did her pension. Her health insurance companies knew she was deceased. I assumed that Dad inherited everything through some last-to-die clause in their papers. (I can admit now that each time Dad handed me the trust papers, I merely glanced through them and never carefully read them figuring I'd have plenty of time once the inevitable (but unthinkable) happened.)

Now, several months after his death, I'm realizing his mistake - and my mistake for trusting him. Things are so much more complicated because we didn't go through the process of Dad inheriting Mom's assets and then us inheriting Dad's assets. I know he had trust in the "trust." Even though it's only one trust, I'm still technically dealing with two estates, and I'm sure the IRA glitch is just the first of many.

Finally, it's not like I learned any lessons settling Mom's estate. Although I wouldn't have been trustee or executor on that one, Dad would have been. But I'm in a crash course trying to figure things out for Mom - and Dad - on difference schedules, trying to figure out which are the important deadlines.

In a nutshell, when a person dies, even if the trust is joint, don't trust the trust. Start the process of administering the estate immediately. Ask the questions about "second to die." Don't assume the surviving spouse will have a good long life, even when there's no reason to assume he or she won't. (FYI: Until a few days before Dad's death, there was no reason to think he was going to die that quickly. A little over a week before he died, two days prior to his final hospitalization, we'd learned he'd beat the cancer.)