Split IRA Accounts.

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L1: Split IRA Accounts.Hi. First of all I appreciate your website. You have very useful information here that is difficult to obtain elsewhere.
My question is this. I currently am drawing SEPP payments from a single IRA account. Can I split this account into two IRA accounts without disturbing the 5 year plan?
Thanks.
2003-06-15 00:42, By: AyJay, IP: [127.0.0.1]

L2: Split IRA Accounts.Hello AyJay:
No problem. Simply perform a trustee-to-trustee transfer of some portion of the assets in IRA #1 in order to create IRA #2.
TheBadger
2003-06-16 07:30, By: TheBadger, IP: [127.0.0.1]

L2: Split IRA Accounts.Hello:
I read Badger’s reply to AyJay and am a bit confused. When I read AyJay’s original post, my thought was that there were two questions inherent in Ayjay’s question: 1) Can an IRA be split into 2 separate IRA accounts; and 2) Would doing this violate the original SEPP and trigger the 10% early withdrawal penalty.
As I understand it, and please correct me if I am mistaken here, any IRA can be split into multiple accounts. In fact, people often do this immediately prior to implementing a SEPP so that they have additional sepaarate accounts that can be tapped via new SEPPs should they need extra money for unexpected expenses.
The 2nd question looks more difficult to me and I cannot understand why splitting an IRA into two separate accounts would not violate the conditions of the original SEPP set up on that account. It seems to me that it would. What happens to the SEPP payment amount when the account is split into 2 eaual parts, for example? Is the SEPP payment cut in half or is an equal payment received from each account such that the total payment is unchanged? If the latter, then why do this at all? If one starts aSEPP and then decides that they only want to take out 1/2 as much money as they stated in the original SEPP, don’t they have to keep taking the amount stated in the original SEPP and not the 1/2 amount?
Thanks for shedding any additional light on this topic. This is a great website and I agree that it has info that cannot easily be found elsewhere.
Regards,
Ed_B2003-06-20 18:45, By: Ed_B, IP: [127.0.0.1]

L2: Split IRA Accounts.The IRA can be split into multiple accounts – as long as all the resulting accounts are still maintained as part of the SEPP. The payment amount would remain unchanged and could be taken from one account or multiple accounts. The real key is that once a SEPP is established, you cannot add new funds or remove funds other than the scheduled payment. Hope this helps.2003-06-20 23:50, By: Gfw, IP: [127.0.0.1]

L2: Split IRA Accounts.Yes, I do have a SEPP in the original IRA but in my case I want to split it 90-10 so it shouldnt materially effect my SEPP payment but my basic question is can you split an IRA that is marked for SEPP payments?
Thanks for any info,
AyJay

2003-06-21 01:44, By: AyJay, IP: [127.0.0.1]

L2: Split IRA Accounts.Thanks GFW …I missed your post earlier.
AyJay
2003-06-21 01:49, By: AyJay, IP: [127.0.0.1]