An additional thought: If you can't get this rolled over, as you suggested you could make contributions to traditional IRAs, but since these would not nondeductible they would not help your immediate tax situation. I would probably consider traditional IRA contributions as being a vehicle to get the money into a Roth IRA where growth would be tax-free instead of only tax-deferred. Absent that, it might be better to use the money to invest in capital investments outside of a retirement account where long-term capital gains are taxed at long-term capital gains rates which are substantially lower than the tax rates for ordinary income that apply to taxable retirement-account distributions. You would also generally have unrestricted access to the funds as long as you were willing to pay the taxes on short- and log-term capital gains.
