Morgan Stanley

[Slim11]

Just curious if anyone had experience with an inherated IRA at Morgan Stanley. I am a direct partial benificary on one of my father's IRA accounts. Morgan Stanley contacted me and set up an account on March 10th to transfer the funds. Everything needed is signed and done, but they never transfered the IRA? 4 months should be plenty of time to have this figured out and done? If you have Morgan Stanley , and you leave assets to a child/wife that needs to acess the accounts, I would maybe think about going with another another institution. I have written emails and placed phone calls to the office and them respond that it's complicated to figure out the distrabutions, and it will be done next week, only to have them not do anything? I calculated out roughly the distrabutions in about 10 mins? I have only one other time inheraded an IRA and it took like a month from start to finish? It was at a diffrent firm.

 

[OldShooter]

It's unfortunate that you are with MS. Their only interest in small retail investors is whatever fees they can extract from them. Their target market is 7 figures or more. In their reports to investors they crow about the "Wealth Management" business making net profits over 25%.

I would suggest a detailed complaint letter sent to your state attorney general's office. Strictly speaking, MS is not regulated by the state but I'll bet that an inquiry letter from that office will get you a prompt response. You can also try FINRA (File a Complaint) but my completely uneducated guess is that things will take longer.

 

[Slim11]

The kicker is my opened account is -100 for fees. Lol they opened up 3 accounts in my name. I am waiting for the other 200 $ in fees for the other 2 accounts. Granted this is on accounts with 0 money. Something just dosent seem right.

 

[Souschef]

I agree with Old Shooter. I had a managed IRA with MS, I was on good terms with my FA, and one day he embarrassedly called me. He said he was getting flack because the account was ONLY 250K.
So I moved the account to FIDO and was done with MS.

 

[Slim11]

I dont have anything but the inherated accounts thier. But it seems like because its not a lot of money that they just don't care if or when I get it. I just want them to release the $$$ so I can move it. Now that you mention fedility, I may call my advisor and she what they can do. IDK.

 

[nwsteve]

I dont have anything but the inherated accounts thier. But it seems like because its not a lot of money that they just don't care if or when I get it. I just want them to release the $$$ so I can move it. Now that you mention fedility, I may call my advisor and she what they can do. IDK.

Great plan--Fido will chase them and likely cover any fees MS charges you!

 

[athena53]

I agree- while my brother was very upset with Fidelity when they couldn't access Dad's account when Dad's cognitive skills declined (Dad had executed all the proper forms well beforehand but they insisted on getting docs to certify that Dad was no longer competent), after he died I opened up a new Inherited IRA account in Fidelity (already had a few accounts there) and the money was transferred promptly and with no problem.

They did move some investments in the after-tax portion to my checking account, which was a little weird, but I got on-line and easily transferred them to my revocable trust account.

 

[ksr]

I handled an estate almost 5 years ago where a significant percentage of the invested assets were at ETrade (since bought by Morgan Stanley). It was the second estate I have administered so I had a fair bit of experience with different financial institutions. ETrade was, hands down, the worst. They made numerous mistakes, lost paperwork, didn't respond to phone calls, etc. After funds had been released from all the other institutions, I was still fighting with ETrade. All I can say is that I (reluctantly) made a real nuisance of myself. I got names of supervisors in a couple of different divisions and called almost daily until the funds were finally released.

At the time I also had some assets there. When the whole ordeal was over I moved all *my* funds out of ETrade. When I was contacted by a rep as to why, I sent back an email outlining in great detail everything that had happened with the estate funds, and told him that I would not want to burder my heirs with the same hassles. He apologized, but I never heard anything else from them.

It sounds like the merger with Morgan Stanley hasn't improved their Estate Department.

 

[marko]

My brother received a Morgan Stanley Inherited Account from his late girlfriend. I am his Conservator and was involved all the way with the transfer.

We had zero problem with the money transferring over. Maybe took a week. Their main concern seemed that we'd be moving the account to Fido or somebody. I don't like the fact that I have to speak to one of their managers to make a trade (no online ability like I can with Fido/TRP et. al.) but otherwise, I have had no issues.