Updated July 29, 2026. Quick answer: Alaska allows a community property agreement — a signed document, no trust required. Its statute provides that such an agreement “must be contained in a written document signed by both spouses” and is “enforceable without consideration.” Every other opt-in state requires transferring assets into a qualifying trust, which is a materially heavier operation.
Why the structural difference matters
| Alaska | The other five | |
|---|---|---|
| Instrument | Agreement or trust | Trust only |
| Must retitle assets | Not necessarily | Yes |
| Ongoing administration | Lighter | Trust administration |
Retitling is where these arrangements tend to fail in practice — assets acquired later never make it into the trust, and the ones that matter most are often the ones nobody moved.
None of which resolves the federal question. Alaska makes it easier to create the arrangement. Whether the arrangement produces the basis result is untested either way, and Alaska’s statute — unlike Florida’s, South Dakota’s and Kansas’s — makes no claim about §1014(b)(6) at all.
A trap in at least one state’s drafting
Kentucky’s act provides that when property is distributed from the trust it “shall no longer constitute community property.” So a distribution can quietly undo the classification the trust existed to create. If you have one of these arrangements, the distribution provisions deserve as much attention as the funding ones.
Sources
IRC §1014(a), (b)(6), (c) and (e); Treas. Reg. §1.1014-1(a) and §1.1014-2(a)(5); IRC §2040(b); IRC §691. State law as cited on each page from the state’s own codified statutes. The nine-state list is attributed to IRS Internal Revenue Manual 25.18.1.2.3 and Publication 555 rather than to fifty separate statutes. All read July 2026.
This states what the cited authority says. It is not tax advice, and retirement-plan design turns on facts about your business and your other entities that no page can see. Every dollar limit referenced here is indexed and changes annually.