Just wrote a check to the US Treasury for $xx,xxx.xx.

[progree]

13. I found a couple things about IRAs with charities as cobeneficiaries and 5 years...

"Although designating a charitable beneficiary of your IRA does not impact Required Minimum Distributions while you are alive, it could impact the distribution requirements of your individual beneficiaries. Let’s say you designate your church as 50% primary beneficiary and your only child as 50% primary beneficiary of your IRA. After you die, IRA rules mandate that the account be fully distributed within five years because you designated a charitable beneficiary. The child’s right to take distributions over his or her life expectancy will not be available.

Since you generally want to utilize the “Stretch IRA” concept to postpone income tax payable by beneficiaries, you can fix this in one of two ways. You can divide the IRA while alive and name the child as the sole beneficiary of the first IRA and the charity as the sole beneficiary of the second IRA. Or, if you have already passed, then your executor can segregate your IRA into two equal parts before December 31st of the year in which you die, and then pay out the charitable IRA ((I think it is by December 31 of THE YEAR FOLLOWING the owner's death. -Progree)) . The child could then take distributions over his or her life expectancy (stretch-out)".

-- Leaving a Charitable Legacy with an IRA, By Dan Mathews, CFP®
http://www.letsmakeaplan.org/blog/view/lets-make-a-plan-blogs/leaving-a-charitable-legacy-with-an-ira

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"CAUTION! Don't mix different kinds of beneficiaries -- for example, a person (or designated beneficiary) with a nonperson such as an estate, charity, or trust -- as co-beneficiaries on one IRA; it won't affect calculating the RMD, but it may close the door to stretching the account later on because the stretch IRA is not permitted after the owner's death in cases where one of the co-beneficiaries is not a person and the account is not split by the end of the year after death. So for example, instead of naming your favorite charity and your three children as co-beneficiaries on one IRA, split the IRA into two IRAs, naming the charity as sole beneficiary on one of them and your three children as co-beneficiaries on the other. You might even want to split the IRA that names your three children into three different RIAs so they don't have to split the account after death."

-- from: The Retirement Savings Time Bomb . . . and How to Defuse It: A Five-Step ..., By Ed Slott
-- https://books.google.com/books?id=V6oh7dPP-msC&pg=PT127&lpg=PT127&dq=iras+with+charities+as+cobeneficiaries&source=bl&ots=9T8C2Q1ExF&sig=ACfU3U2TnyeChuRlvh45wg1omrRJ-Hduaw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiMpcD-q83hAhVSLK0KHXNXA4EQ6AEwDnoECC8QAQ#v=onepage&q=iras%20with%20charities%20as%20cobeneficiaries&f=false


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That said, the "stretch IRA" that my sister and I are enjoying might not be around for long:

Congress may gut the 'stretch IRA' that wealthy people love, CNBC, 4/11/19
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/congress-may-gut-apos-stretch-133019407.html
# The House Ways and Means Committee passed the Secure Act earlier this month in a bid to help workers save for retirement.
# A provision in the bill would force the distribution of a retirement account within 10 years for most nonspouse beneficiaries, which could throw cold water on a tax-savings strategy known as the "stretch IRA."
...

It's not just "the wealthy", it's the beneficiaries of anyone who happens to have an IRA or 401(k) and passes before it is depleted, sigh. The Obama administration had been trying to kill it too.

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I should have mentioned in my #9 that irahelp.com had (and probably has) excellent forums with real experts answering questions. So one doesn't have to wade through a bunch of reading material ...