How to name beneficiaries and fund a trust at First Savings

IRA beneficiary designations are handled separately from deposit-account POD designations. They are custodial paperwork.¹

A trust can be named as the beneficiary of an IRA.¹

Primary and contingent beneficiaries can be named, with a percentage or fractional share for each where there is more than one.¹

Provided at a branch.²

With the LDPS form, a beneficiary who dies first is replaced by that beneficiary's lineal descendants per stirpes who survive all the account creators. Without LDPS, the share is reallocated among the surviving beneficiaries in proportion to their shares.²

Under First Merchants' terms, if no beneficiary survives all the persons who created the account and no LDPS substitute applies, the funds belong to the owner's estate and go through probate.²

A joint account with survivorship passes to the survivor outright, so a POD beneficiary added to a joint account does not reach the money until every joint owner has died.¹

First Merchants reserves the right to refuse some forms of ownership and beneficiary designation. It makes no representations about the appropriateness or effect of a designation, except that it determines to whom the funds are paid.¹

In Indiana, the account terms offer Individual, Joint Account with survivorship, Joint Account with no survivorship (tenants in common), Revocable Trust Account / In Trust For, and Pay-on-Death accounts.²

In Indiana, a Pay-on-Death account takes either the LDPS or the No-LDPS form, and the choice is recorded on the account.²

Checking, savings, money market and certificate accounts can be held by a trustee under a written trust agreement. The account terms contemplate an account "opened and maintained by a person or persons named as a trustee under a written trust agreement."^{1, 2}

An IRA cannot be retitled into a trust. A trust can be named as its beneficiary instead.¹

The HSA cannot be retitled into a trust.¹

First Merchants' account terms state that by opening a trustee account the bank is not acting as trustee and does not monitor or enforce the terms of the trust. It is not responsible for a fiduciary's actions, including misuse of funds.²

Under the Indiana section (7a) of the account terms, an In Trust For account is a beneficiary designation on an account the depositor still owns, not an account owned by a separate written trust.²