My wife has an IRA inwhich she listed HER ESTATE as beneficuary, should I be concerned. She tells me she dosen't have a will.

If your wife designates her estate as the beneficiary of her IRA, she is ensuring the worst possible income tax result for the assets which remain in it at her death. If she is under the age of 70 1/2 years old at her death, the IRA would have to be fully withdrawn within 5 years after her death. If she is over 70 1/2 at her death, then the IRA assets will have to be fully withdrawn over a period based on her life expectancy as of the age she was when she died, according to the IRS tables used for this purpose. However, if she named you as her beneficiary, you would be able to either roll the IRA over into your own IRA, or, if you preferred, you could withdraw the assets from her IRA without a penalty (even if you were under 59 1/2 at the time your wife died) but over a period based on your own life expectancy. If your wife has children or other, younger, persons she wants to benefit, she could name them directly and they could use their own life expectancies as the withdrawal periods. So, by naming her estate, she's creating a situation where a lot of continued income tax deferral which could have been available will instead be lost. She is also making the IRA assets subject to claims of any creditors she may have at her death, while by naming beneficiaries directly, she could protect the IRA assets from her creditors and help ensure they were available to the beneficiaries. Finally, if there are young beneficiaries and it would be desirable to have a Trustee appointed to manage their assets for them for some period, by not having a properly drafted Will put in place she is losing out on the ability to have the IRA paid directly to trusts for the younger beneficiaries. Done properly, the trusts can still use the individual beneficiaries' life expectancies as minimum required distribution periods. But this can't be accomplished by naming the estate as the beneficiary. Your wife should ideally also have a Will for other purposes, including to make it easier for her family to manage her affairs after her death and to ensure that her assets pass the way she wants them to, and to the person(s) who she wants to have them. She should ideally also have a Power of Attorney and an Advance Directive for Health Care. You should, too. So yes, be concerned, and try to get your wife to consider having an experienced estate planning attorney help her actually put together a good estate plan.