The high cost of keeping IRA beneficiary designations private

Clients have a right to keep their IRA beneficiary designations private. But you might want to advise them that this privacy can have a high price for loved ones – as the case of the late Wayne Wilson shows.

In 2010, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the priority of an IRA beneficiary designation over the claim made by a widow who asserted her rights to receive qualified retirement plan benefits under ERISA’s surviving spouse requirements.  The case (Charles Schwab & Co. v. Chandler) was brought by the IRA custodian, Charles Schwab, to resolve a dispute between the four married children of Wayne Wilson and his widow, Katherine Chandler, to whom he had been married since 2000.

Wilson had participated in his company’s 401(k) plan until making a rollover to an IRA in 1994. He then continued to consolidate and move his IRA assets between accounts and custodians until his accidental death in 2005, when his truck and horse trailer was washed away and overturned in a flash flood in Arizona. 

Rather than release Wilson’s IRA money to the four children whom he had designated beneficiaries, Schwab asked the court to resolve the disputed claims.  The widow claimed ERISA had given her spousal rights to be paid Wayne’s 401(k) plan money through a Qualified Joint and Survivor Annuity (QJSA), and she had not waived these rights.