There is nothing wrong with her having her own retirement savings.

For lots of reasons, keep it in her name. If you want to move it to get
better choices, that's fine but leave it in her name. Its her money.

"dcp" <dcp12345678[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1b8617a8.0403040831.2c5c2f3d[at]posting.google.com...

- quote -

Hey -- it's HER retirement, not yours. I know married people will share, but
let's make sure she is protected.
- quote -

If you don't like where her money is and how it's performing, then this is
your other option, and still keep the growth non-taxed. You don't have to
convert it all at once, if the tax consequences are a little steep. You can
do it over a period of years if need be.

Elizabeth Richardson

"dcp" <dcp12345678[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1b8617a8.0403040831.2c5c2f3d[at]posting.google.com...
- quote -

Give it up, you can't do this! You cannot commingle your wife's retirement
money with yours.

Gene E. Utterback, EA

Here's my situation. My wife has a 403b and 401a plan at her previous
employer. She left that job about a year ago because of the birth of
our
daughter and doesn't plan to return to it.

I have a 401k plan at my current employer, and what I'd like to do is
roll her
403b and 401a money into *my* 401k. However, I called my benefits
hotline
and they said I couldn't do that because the 403b and 401a are in her
name,
which would prevent me from being able to roll them into my plan.

Question1:
So I came up with this idea. If I roll her 403b and 401a into a
conduit IRA in her name,and then switch the ownership to me, would I
then be able to roll the funds into my 401k? The benefits
representative seemed to think this would be ok.
I'm just a little worried about the "switch ownership" part. Am I
going to
run into problems there? If there's a better way to accomplish this,
I'd love to hear it.

Question2:
Another twist. My wife also has a Roth IRA. Another option would be
to to roll her 403b and 401a into a conduit IRA in her name (I don't
think I can roll them directly into her Roth, correct me if I'm wrong
here). Then I could roll from the conduit to her Roth, realizing that
I'm going to pay tax on the conversion amount. Is this type of roll
possible?

Question3:
If you roll funds into a Roth from a conduit IRA, can you still make
your $3000 contribution for the year or does it count against it?

My main reason for wanting to roll directly into my 401k was to avoid
any tax consequence, which I would incur if we roll to the conduit and
then to her Roth. I don't really want to have any kind of IRA's
except for Roths.

If you've made it to this point, thanks for reading! I'm interested
in any advice you folks can offer.