Q. My spouse and I are both retired CSRS employees with TSP accounts. As a general rule, I know that if one of us dies the survivor can have the deceased member’s TSP balance transferred to their TSP account. We are each the primary beneficiary of the other’s account. How does this work once we are taking RMDs? Say one of us dies in 2020. Does the TSP take the deceased member’s account balance, deduct any RMDs still due to be paid in 2020, transfer the remaining balance to the spouse’s account and send a check for the remaining RMDs not yet paid to the spouse? The tax notice information on the TSP website is not very clear on this issue.
A. The usual practice is to distribute the RMD and then transfer the remaining balance, but there may be exceptions under certain circumstances.
