Quote Originally Posted by jp1 View Post
No kidding. I recently had to contact the broker that manages my deceased father's IRA because I needed to do the minimum required distribution for 2015. I had hoped to do it online, but no such luck. I had to call them to do it and had to repeatedly shut down the guy's efforts to "help" me manage my money, first dad's IRA which only has about $3,000 left in it, and then all my other money.
I inherited my dad's IRA which he had at a local bank. I wanted to transfer this to Fidelity, which has some of my other investments. The transfer was one of the most frustrating financial transactions I've made, with the bank claiming they had lost the paper work or some other bogus excuse that complicated to process. I was assigned a Fidelity rep who dogged things to make sure the transfer went through, although it ended up taking a few months. I was so pleased with Fidelity's customer service that I wrote a personal letter to the rep and his boss with compliments. It has been effortless ever since.

Most everything else I know agrees with Rodeo Sweetheart's post. Whether you roll over into a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA depends on you personal philosophy and your anticipated tax situation, since you will pay taxes on the Roth upon transfer rather than when you start withdrawals. I get help from my accountant with that. However I do believe if you have money in a traditional IRA, you can then transfer to a Roth in smaller increments over more than one year or at any time to spread out the income you would have to pay taxes on.

I'm anticipating my income to increase significantly when I start social security, so I've been transferring small increments from my traditional IRA to my Roth every year to avoid a larger income tax burden in a higher tax bracket when I start social security. It's a plan my accountant has suggested and every year he comes up with a maximum amount to transfer from traditional to roth that will still keep me in a lower tax bracket.