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As you have learned, 401k and IRA funds are individual and belong to one person only, and funds from more than one person can never be combined, even if they are spouses.  

 

As of now, if you don't change anything, what you have is a withdrawal from your spouse's plan, that is taxable income plus a 10% penalty for early withdrawal (assuming your spouse is under age 55).  Then, you have a $2000 deposit into an IRA in your own name, which might be tax deductible depending on your employment situation and other income.

 

You have the option of withdrawing contributions from your own IRA up to the tax filing deadline, if this happened in 2022, then you have until April 15, 2023 to withdraw the funds.  Simply tell the IRA bank that you made a mistake and want to withdraw the funds, it's not a recharacterization.  If you have gains (growth) from the mistaken contribution, you also must withdraw those gains, and the gains will be taxable plus the 10% early withdrawal penalty.

 

However, if more than 60 days have passed since the 401k withdrawal, you can't re-deposit the funds into an IRA in your spouse's name and call it a tax-free rollover, so your spouse will still pay income tax plus the 10% penalty on the withdrawal.  

 

If you are eligible to contribute $2K to your own IRA, then I would probably leave things as-is.  The tax deduction on your $2K IRA contribution will offset the income tax on your spouse's $2K withdrawal, and you will be left with the 10% penalty, but there is no way to avoid that.  Then separately, your spouse can open an IRA in their own name and make tax-deductible contributions so you each have separate retirement funds.  If your spouse doesn't have compensation from working, she can still make IRA contributions by relying on your compensation.  (Note that all IRA contributions are subject to rules based on income and employment status that you must follow.)