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Mr. Ohrman’s Early Withdrawals From His Retirement Account
During 1999, Mr. Ohrman was the owner of an individual
retirement account (IRA) at Dean Witter Reynolds (Dean Witter
account). The Dean Witter account was a rollover account set up
by petitioner and Mr. Ohrman in 1997. Petitioner was present
with Mr. Ohrman when the Dean Witter account was established.
Thereafter, petitioner maintained a file for the Dean Witter
account and placed the monthly account statements into a
notebook. As of February 28, 1999, the Dean Witter account had a
total asset value of $454,406.
Petitioner was the designated beneficiary of the Dean Witter
account, but her written consent was not required to make an
early withdrawal. Petitioner was aware of how much money was in
the Dean Witter account in 1998 and 1999, and she believed there
was approximately $700,000 in the account at one point in 1998.
Because of the size of the Dean Witter account, petitioner
solicited promises from Mr. Ohrman before and during 1999 that he
would not use any of the funds in the Dean Witter account for
gambling.
Despite his promises to petitioner, Mr. Ohrman withdrew
$79,000 in early distributions from the Dean Witter account in
11 separate transactions from March 19 to December 21, 1999, to
fund his gambling addiction. Petitioner neither knew about nor
consented to these early distributions, nor did petitioner sign
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Last modified: May 25, 2011