The SECURE 2.0 Act and recent case law have changed some of the rules around retirement accounts and estate planning, said Robert Keebler, an estate planning expert and partner at Keebler and Associates, a tax advisory and CPA firm in Green Bay, Wisc.

In a webinar hosted by advisor Michael Kitces, Keebler said several new provisions allow for tax- and penalty-free withdrawals from 401(k)s and IRAs in the event of national emergencies. After a federally declared emergency, clients living in a disaster zone can withdraw up to $22,000 from their IRAs and 401(k)s without penalty if it’s done within 180 days, he said. In addition, they can now borrow up to $100,000 against their retirement accounts.

SECURE 2.0 also clarified that inherited retirement accounts are subject to required minimum distributions (RMDs) if the original account holder was old enough to be already making RMDs, he said. The entire inherited account must be liquidated within 10 years of it being inherited.

If the original account holder passed away too young to be making RMDs, and the surviving spouse who inherits the IRA is actually older, he or she can wait to begin making RMDs until the RMDs would have been due if the original account holder had survived, he said.

Separately, the IRS has laid out other rules for surviving spouses who inherit an IRA. For instance, they can roll the inherited IRA over to an IRA of their own. But they can only do this if they were the sole beneficiary or the late spouse’s estate was the beneficiary, he said.

Case law has also provided greater clarity about the rules for rollovers of inherited IRAs, he said. In a case against the estate of the late actor James Caan, it was ruled that in order to be tax-free, the rollover must occur within 60 days and the entire property must be rolled over. This can only occur once per year, or taxes will be due.

Also, catch-up contributions to 401(k) accounts will increase for clients age 60 and over from $7,500 to $10,000 a year starting next year, he said.

ABLE accounts, which are tax-advantaged savings vehicles for disabled people that allow them to accrue assets to pay for disability-related expenses without losing eligibility for certain means-tested public benefits programs, such as Medicaid, will no longer require that the saver became disabled before age 26. As of 2026, the age will be raised to age 46, making this option available for more people.

In the area of education, SECURE 2.0 added “a mechanism to roll over unused 529 college savings accounts to Roth IRAs,” he said. But there are limits and regulations. For example, he said, the 529 must have been maintained for at least 15 years and it must be a direct, trustee-to-trustee transfer that benefits only the original 529 beneficiary. “Roth income limits don’t seem to apply,” he added, but there is an aggregate lifetime limit on such transfers of $35,000.

The rules regarding penalties for skipped RMDs have also changed, he said. The penalty for missed minimum distributions was reduced from 50% to 25%. But it can be further reduced to 10% if the missing amount is withdrawn within the “correction window,” he said, meaning in a timely fashion, preferably before a notice of deficiency is mailed, but at latest within three years of when the penalty was due.

The exemptions for taxes on generation-skipping transfers (GST), which allow you to earmark assets to either skip a generation or go to a trust that benefits multiple generations, could also be changing, he said. He presented a hypothetical client who is a 75-year-old divorced retiree with $10 million in IRAs, $5 million in other assets, and enough cash to sustain her active lifestyle. She wants to provide for her grandchildren, however, since her children are financially successful and can afford estate taxes.

“So does it make sense mathematically,” he asked, to liquidate this woman’s IRAs now to “consume her basic exclusion amount and GST exemption” before those rates change?

It was an academic exercise without a clear answer. The best solution for the client depended on a number of variables, he explained, including the age of her death.