TSP rules split into 4 areas and this page covers the ones that govern the account itself, verified on 10 September 2026 against the United States Code and the plan’s own pages. Contributions, withdrawals and loans each have their own page, linked below, because each carries enough detail to need one.
What sits here is the material none of those cover, and the spousal protections in particular are the most consequential rules in the plan that almost nobody reads.
Where the other TSP rules live
The annual ceilings and the way agency matching sits outside them are on contribution limits, while every age threshold and the exceptions that remove the 10% penalty are set out on withdrawal rules. Borrowing terms and the quarterly default clock are on loan rules, and the 4 choices available when you separate from service are on rollover options.
Your spouse has legal rights over your TSP
This is the rule most likely to matter and least likely to be mentioned to you. Section 8435 of title 5 is headed protections for spouses and former spouses, and it means what it says.
A married employee or Member may make a withdrawal election only if the employee and their spouse jointly waive, by written election, any right the spouse may have to a survivor annuity. The statute allows that requirement to be set aside only where the spouse’s whereabouts cannot be determined, or where exceptional circumstances make requiring the waiver inappropriate, and both determinations rest with the Executive Director rather than with the participant.
There is a second layer underneath it. Where an annuity contract is purchased for a married participant, the joint and survivor form providing the closest approximation to a surviving spouse annuity is deemed to apply automatically, unless the participant and spouse jointly waive it in writing.
So a married federal employee moving a TSP balance anywhere is not making that decision alone, and a spouse asked to sign is not performing a formality. They are waiving a statutory entitlement of their own.
If a move is being discussed, both signatures are needed, and what a custodian charges is worth knowing before either of you signs.
See which custodians take a TSPVesting
Your own contributions, everything they earn, and the agency or service matching are yours from the moment they arrive. Only the automatic 1% has a vesting period attached.
That takes 3 years of federal civilian service for a FERS employee, or 2 years in uniform for a member under the Blended Retirement System. Leaving before the threshold forfeits the automatic 1% and everything it earned, and civilian service does not count toward the military requirement or the reverse.
Traditional against Roth
The plan tracks a traditional balance and a Roth balance separately, and the $24,500 annual elective deferral limit applies to the 2 of them combined rather than to each. Agency contributions are always traditional, whatever you elect for your own money, so a participant contributing entirely to Roth still accumulates a traditional balance alongside it.
That split matters at rollover, because the 2 balances have different tax treatment and a receiving custodian has to be able to track them separately, while a service member with combat zone contributions has a third category on top of those.
Death and beneficiaries
A court decree of divorce, annulment or legal separation can bind a TSP account, as can a court order or court-approved property settlement agreement incident to such a decree. Section 8435 sets out how those interact with a current spouse’s rights, and a former spouse of a participant who died after performing 18 or more months of service may be entitled to a survivor annuity to the extent a decree provides for it.
The practical point is that a beneficiary designation does not override a court order, and neither of them overrides the statutory spousal protections while the participant is alive.
If the balance does move
Assuming both signatures are in place, the mechanics are the same as anywhere else in this cluster. A direct rollover sends the money from the plan straight to the receiving custodian with no tax withheld, whereas an indirect rollover pays you first, withholding applies, and the full original amount has to be redeposited inside 60 days out of your own pocket.
Once the money is in a self-directed IRA holding metal, the purity rules of section 408(m) decide what bullion qualifies, it has to sit at an approved depository rather than at home, and a custodian fee plus a storage fee commonly run several hundred dollars a year regardless of balance, with the premium over spot on the first purchase sitting on top of both.
What a self-directed IRA may hold on the other side of a rollover is set out on TSP to gold IRA.
What the rules add up to
The TSP is unusually protective of people other than the account holder, and that is a deliberate design rather than an oversight. A balance can stay in the plan indefinitely with $200 or more in it, at 0.034% to 0.051% a year, and cannot be moved out from under a spouse.
Whether the balance should stay is a different question and depends on what it is invested in. The G Fund returned 0.43% a year after inflation over the last 2 decades, so protection from being moved is not the same thing as protection from losing purchasing power.