Can an IRA Be Transferred to Another Person? Divorce and Death Rules

An IRA cannot be transferred to another person during your lifetime, with two narrow exceptions: a transfer to a spouse or former spouse under a divorce decree, and a qualified charitable distribution if you’re 70½ or older. Otherwise, an IRA only changes hands after you die, and it goes to whoever is named on the beneficiary designation form.

Why Lifetime Transfers Aren’t Allowed

The tax code defines an IRA as a trust created for the exclusive benefit of one individual or that individual’s beneficiaries.¹ You cannot add a co-owner, retitle the account in someone else’s name, or gift it to a family member while you’re alive.

Try to move it anyway and the IRS treats the whole account as if it had been distributed to you. The full fair market value becomes taxable income that year.¹ If you’re under 59½, add a 10% early withdrawal penalty on top of the regular tax.²

Family members — your spouse, parents, children, and their spouses — are specifically listed as “disqualified persons” for IRA transactions.³ Any direct dealing between your IRA and one of them is a prohibited transaction that strips the account of its tax-advantaged status entirely, and the whole balance is treated as distributed even if nothing actually moved.¹

You can, of course, withdraw money from your IRA, pay the tax, and then give the cash to someone. That’s an ordinary gift and follows gift tax rules. In 2026, you can give up to $19,000 per recipient per year without filing a gift tax return.⁴ But the IRA itself is gone once you take the withdrawal.

Divorce: The One Lifetime Person-to-Person Transfer

Divorce is the only situation where IRA ownership passes from one living person to another without triggering taxes. Federal law treats a transfer of your interest in an IRA to a spouse or former spouse under a divorce or separation instrument as non-taxable.¹ Once complete, the account belongs to the receiving spouse for every tax purpose going forward.

What the Decree Has to Say

The court order or separation agreement must specifically direct a transfer of the IRA assets. Most custodians require:

Language ordering a “transfer” of the account. Wording like “awarded to” often gets rejected because custodians need to code the movement as a non-taxable transfer, not a distribution.
Identification of the IRA, usually at least the last four digits of the account number.
A specific dollar amount, percentage, or list of assets to be moved.
Certification by a judge or court clerk that the decree is in full force and effect.

If the decree is missing details, a property settlement agreement referencing the account can fill the gaps. Custodians will not accept instructions that require them to interpret anything, such as calculating earnings or penalties as of a certain date.

Use a Direct Transfer, Not a Check

The safest route is a trustee-to-trustee transfer, where the funds move straight from one IRA custodian to another without touching either spouse’s hands. If the custodian sends a check to the receiving spouse instead, 10% is automatically withheld for taxes unless the recipient opts out.⁵

The recipient then has 60 days to deposit the full original amount — including the withheld portion, replaced from other money — into their own IRA. Miss the deadline and the withheld portion becomes taxable, plus a possible 10% early withdrawal penalty if the recipient is under 59½.⁵ A direct transfer avoids all of that.

Giving IRA Money to Charity While You’re Alive

If you’re 70½ or older, you can send up to $111,000 per year straight from a Traditional IRA to a qualified charity without counting the distribution as taxable income.⁶⁷ This is a qualified charitable distribution, or QCD, and it’s the only way to move IRA money to a non-family recipient tax-free during your lifetime.

The payment has to go directly from the IRA custodian to the charity. You can’t withdraw the money first and write a personal check. The charity must qualify under the tax code, which covers most public charities but excludes donor-advised funds and private foundations. A QCD can also count toward your required minimum distribution for the year.

On your return, report the full distribution on the IRA distributions line, write “QCD” next to the taxable amount line, and enter zero (or the reduced figure) as the taxable portion.⁸ A separate one-time election allows a QCD of up to $55,000 to a charitable remainder trust or charitable gift annuity.⁶

Transfers After the Owner Dies

When an IRA owner dies, the account passes to whoever is named on the beneficiary designation form. Not the will. Not the living trust. If your will leaves your IRA to your daughter but the beneficiary form still lists your ex-spouse, your ex-spouse gets the account.

Surviving Spouse Options

A surviving spouse has the most flexibility of any beneficiary. They can:

Roll the IRA into their own account, treating the balance as if it had always been theirs and using their own age for required minimum distributions.
Keep it as an inherited IRA, taking distributions based on their own life expectancy — useful if they’re under 59½ and need access without the early withdrawal penalty.
Take a lump-sum distribution, which triggers income tax on the full balance of a Traditional IRA.

The spousal rollover is the most common choice because it preserves the most tax-deferred growth.⁹

Non-Spouse Beneficiaries and the 10-Year Rule

For account owners who died after 2019, most non-spouse beneficiaries must withdraw the entire inherited IRA balance by the end of the 10th year after the year of death.¹⁰ This 10-year rule, introduced by the SECURE Act, replaced the older “stretch IRA” approach that let beneficiaries take distributions over their full life expectancy. The beneficiary opens an inherited IRA and manages withdrawals across that decade.

Starting in 2025, IRS final regulations added a wrinkle. If the original owner had already begun taking required minimum distributions before dying, the beneficiary must take annual distributions during years one through nine, not just empty the account by year ten.¹¹ If the owner died before their required beginning date, the beneficiary can spread withdrawals however they choose inside the 10-year window.

Traditional IRA withdrawals count as ordinary income at the beneficiary’s rate, which runs from 10% to 37% in 2026.¹²¹³ Roth IRA withdrawals are generally tax-free if the account met the five-year holding period; if the Roth was less than five years old at death, the earnings portion may be taxable.

Beneficiaries Who Can Stretch Beyond 10 Years

Five categories of beneficiaries are exempt from the 10-year rule and can instead take distributions over their own life expectancy:⁹

A surviving spouse.
A minor child of the account owner, who can stretch distributions until age 21, when the 10-year clock then begins. This applies only to the owner’s own children — not grandchildren, nieces, or nephews.
A disabled individual, as defined by the IRS.
A chronically ill individual.
Anyone not more than 10 years younger than the deceased owner, such as a sibling or close-in-age friend.

If No Beneficiary Is Named

If the owner never designated a beneficiary, or all named beneficiaries died first, the account typically passes to the owner’s estate under the custodian’s default provisions. That’s generally the worst outcome. An estate is not an individual, so the SECURE Act’s 10-year rule doesn’t apply. Instead, older rules kick in: if the owner died before their required beginning date, the entire balance must come out within five years.⁹ If required minimum distributions had already started, the estate’s beneficiaries can use the owner’s remaining life expectancy but lose the ability to use their own timeline. The funds may also have to pass through probate.

Naming a Trust as Beneficiary

Some owners name a trust as their IRA beneficiary to keep control over how the money is distributed — for a minor child, a beneficiary with special needs, or a spendthrift heir. For the IRS to “look through” the trust and treat the individual trust beneficiaries as the designated beneficiaries, the trust must be valid under state law, be irrevocable or become irrevocable at the owner’s death, clearly identify its beneficiaries, and provide documentation to the custodian by the required deadline.¹⁴ Fail any of those and the IRA is treated as having no designated beneficiary, triggering the less favorable five-year timeline.

Trusts that retain IRA distributions instead of passing them through also face compressed tax brackets: a trust reaches the top 37% federal rate at just $16,000 of taxable income in 2026.¹³ A conduit trust that passes distributions straight to the beneficiary avoids that by taxing them at the individual’s rate; an accumulation trust that holds distributions inside the trust hits those compressed brackets fast.

Paperwork for a Permitted Transfer

For a divorce transfer, you’ll typically need the custodian’s transfer request form, a court-certified copy of the divorce decree with the transfer details described above, and a new IRA application for the receiving spouse if they don’t already have an account at the same institution. Ask for a trustee-to-trustee transfer to avoid withholding and the 60-day deadline.⁵

For a death transfer, the beneficiary generally needs the custodian’s beneficiary claim form, a certified copy of the death certificate, their Social Security number, and a new inherited IRA application. If several beneficiaries are named, each files their own claim and the custodian splits the assets according to the percentages on file.⁹

Custodians may require a Medallion Signature Guarantee for larger transfers, which is a separate certification from a bank or brokerage and not the same thing as a notary stamp. Termination or transfer fees, often $25 to $125, sometimes apply when closing the original account. Ask before you start. Once documents are in, processing usually takes one to two weeks, after which the custodian issues a confirmation statement that serves as the official record.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts
2
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Exceptions to Tax on Early Distributions
3
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Prohibited Transactions
4
Internal Revenue Service. What’s New – Estate and Gift Tax
5
Internal Revenue Service. Rollovers of Retirement Plan and IRA Distributions
6
Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2025-67 – 2026 Amounts Relating to Retirement Plans and IRAs
7
Internal Revenue Service. Important Charitable Giving Reminders for Taxpayers
8
Internal Revenue Service. Seniors Can Reduce Their Tax Burden by Donating to Charity Through Their IRA
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Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
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Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
11
Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2024-35 – Certain Required Minimum Distributions for 2024
12
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B – Distributions From Individual Retirement Arrangements
13
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Releases Tax Inflation Adjustments for Tax Year 2026
14
Internal Revenue Service. Technical Guidance on See-Through Trusts for IRA Beneficiaries