An official at the Internal Revenue Service has approved 3 arrangements that involve payments of individual retirement account assets once held by a dead spouse into a marital trust.
Mary Berman, an employee of the IRS associate chief counsel's office, holds in Revenue Ruling 2006-26, that all 3 trust arrangements described give the surviving spouse enough control over the trust assets to have a "qualifying income interest for life" in both the IRA and the marital trust.