IRA

[redbird]

tl;dr still waiting for things

The latest on that inherited IRA is that I got two email messages from Fidelity today, one saying that I needed to do something [unspecified] to transfer the money from BNY, and one saying specifically that BNY had told Fidelity that they, BNY, needed to talk to me.

So, I called BNY, and after various annoyances with their phone tree, talked to someone. He told me that they had no record yet of receiving the form I sent by next-day mail, but that if the form had arrived late Wednesday they might not be scanned until late today or even Monday. Also that once the form is scanned into the BNY system, it may take a few days before they actually transfer the money into my name, which would be necessary in order to move it to Fidelity.

So, I can (and probably will) call Monday to check that the form was in fact been received, but he thinks I should call later in the week, maybe Wednesday, maybe as late as Friday, and ask for my brand-new account number. Once I have that number, I have to fill out appropriate paperwork with Fidelity. *sigh*

I am both annoyed that even paying for next-day delivery, this is taking several days, and thinking that if I hadn’t paid for faster delivery I would be a few days further behind.

The man also said that once the funds are transferred, they will send me an acknowledgement by mail, including the new account number. However, waiting for that to arrive (rather than getting the information by phone) does not seem prudent, given the IRS deadline for the 2025 required minimum distribution.

Comments

[kaffy_r]

Banks - damn. That's at least one reason we've been married to our credit union for years. At least when they make mistakes, or take too long doing something, they apologize. It's such a rarity in the financial world ...

I'll be here on the sidelines, cheering for a quicker than expected solution to your situation.

[redbird]

I am also happy with my credit union, to the extent that I've been doing all my banking remotely since 2016 rather than looking for a bank with branches in Boston. The downside of that is that having branches anywhere nearby means they can't help me with anything that has to be done in person, like this stupid medallion signature. On the other hand, it seems as though relatively few banks or other financial institutions do that, and no Boston-area credit unions do. (If any did, I'd have been looking at BECU's list of "partner credit unions.")

At the moment, I'm dealing with BNY because that's where my mother had her IRA account. Once I transfer the account to Fidelity, I can go back to ignoring BNY. I'm moving that account to Fidelity because they're the first place I called that was willing and able to provide the medallion signature guarantee (not counting Chase, which said they could and then called me back to say no, actually, they can't).

[kaffy_r]

Chase has given a friend of mine a lack of service that approached monumental cruelty, so I'm not surprised at what they said to you,

Our credit union's only physical location is about 1.5 hours away in rush hour traffic; about 1 hour in quiet traffic. We've been out there only a few times, for major decisions like them giving us a mortgage, etc., and there are definitely times I wish we could just walk in to talk about financial situations.

[redbird]

Mine has a lot of physicsl locations, it's just that almost all of them are in Washington and Alaska. I opened the account when it was in easy walking distance of where I was living at the time. I had been living in New York, which has strict rules on who can join a given credit union; the eligibility for this one included anyone who lived in Washington or Alaska.

I have been thinking on and off that it would be useful to also have a local bank account, but haven't yet gotten around to it.

The really weird thing about Chase in this context is that my brother has a Chase account, and a branch near him provided the medallion signature without a problem. I don't know whether that branch was generally friendlier, or if it had to do with him being executor of the estate.

[ofearthandstars]

I remember having to go through this medallion non-sense with my dad's 401K savings, which were put into an inherited IRA, but were moved from Prudential to my local credit union. I found the in-office nonsense to be cumbersome, especially since this was happening in 2020. :/

[redbird]

Fortunately, the Fidelity office I went to was almost empty, and they didn't ask me to take off my mask, just looked at my photo ID and my face.

[ofearthandstars]

That's good to hear. Though I realized I may have misremembered - it happened in 2019, and I realized this because we were part of the last year in which the old IRA inheritance rules applied (so the RMD happens over our lifetime instead of 10 years). I had to do a lot of estate work through 2020-2021 though, including closing out those accounts...everything dragged on in part because it took so long to get medical bills finalized and insurance cleared, and then thr courthouses were closed/operating extremely slow. *sigh* The paperwork of death makes it all so much more painful, it seems.

[redbird]

Yes, all the paperwork I'm getting says that this is covered by the "ten-year rule."

Most of the paperwork related to my mother's estate is being handled by other people, including my brother, who is one of the executors of the estate.

A lot of this is happening in England, and is apparently taking a while. The only thing that moved quickly was the funeral, because of Jewish custom.