What should I do after inheriting an IRA?
Establish the facts before you move any money. Almost every rule that will apply to you follows from four things: what kind of account it is, when the owner died, whether the owner had already reached the age at which distributions had to begin, and what kind of beneficiary you are.
Until those are settled, the deadline you have read about may not be your deadline. Beneficiaries are not all on the same schedule, and the schedule is decided by classification rather than by preference.
Two things are usually time-sensitive: any distribution the owner was required to take for the year of death, and keeping the account correctly titled as an inherited account so that no step accidentally becomes a taxable event. Most of the rest can be worked through carefully.
Classification comes before every deadline
Beneficiary rules are not one rule. Which framework applies depends on what kind of beneficiary was named, what kind of account it is, when the owner died, and whether the owner had already reached the required beginning date.
Any explanation that starts with a deadline has skipped the step that determines whether the deadline applies at all. An estate or other non-individual beneficiary, for example, is generally not on the ten-year rule at all.
A deadline and an annual requirement are two different obligations
The ten-year rule sets a date by which the account must be empty. Whether something must also come out in the years before that date is a separate question with a separate answer.
Under the final regulations, that second question turns largely on whether the owner had reached the required beginning date at death.
The steps that cannot be undone
Most of this can be worked through slowly. A small number of actions cannot: a nonspouse beneficiary taking a distribution instead of arranging a direct transfer, an inherited balance commingled with the beneficiary's own IRA, or a spousal treatment made before its consequences were understood.
Tax character passes through to the beneficiary
Retirement balances do not receive the basis adjustment that applies to much other inherited property. What would have been income to the owner remains income to the beneficiary, and the account's traditional or Roth character carries through.
What a general answer cannot tell you
A general explanation can name the variables and show how they interact. It cannot establish your beneficiary classification, confirm which regime applies to your account, calculate an amount, or tell you when to withdraw.
Those determinations rest on the account documents, the beneficiary designation in force at death and your own tax picture, and they belong with the custodian, a tax professional and, where a trust or an estate is involved, an attorney. Nothing here is individualized tax, legal, investment or estate advice.
Reviewed by Bay Area Wealth Advisors. Last reviewed 2026-09-18. Educational information only — not individualized financial, tax or legal advice.