“The SECURE Act and Retirement Account Planning Opportunities,” that’s the subject of today’s ACTEC Trust and Estate Talk.

Transcript/Show Notes

This is Doug Stanley, ACTEC Fellow from St. Louis, Missouri. A significant new federal law called the SECURE Acthas fundamentally changed how we plan with retirement accounts. ACTEC Fellow Laura Fine from New Orleans, Louisiana will explain planning opportunities in light of the SECURE Act. Welcome, Laura.

Thank you for having me today. I’m very glad to be here. So, today we’re going to talk a little bit about the SECURE Act, which went into effect January 1st of 2020, and enacted some really major changes to the way that we plan with retirement accounts. One of the changes it made was it changed the beginning date for starting to take required minimum distributions for plan participants to age 72. One of the bigger changes that it made was in how beneficiaries of retirement plans can take out the plan proceeds.

The old rule was that most plan beneficiaries could take it out over their lifetime, according to their own life expectancy. And the rule now is that most beneficiaries are going to have to take out the entire plan within 10 years of the death of the plan participant.