Three inherited iras from siblings

Submitted by thomas howard on Mon, 2014-08-18 22:13

I inherited a share of a traditional ira from my brother in 2004. I have two sisters that each inherited a share of the same account. My older sister (7 years older) died in 2007 and I inherited a part of her account as did my second sister. My second sister died in 2014(5 years older than me) and I inherited the two accounts from her (ie, one she had received from our brother and one that she had received from our sister.)

The question is where do I go to in the single life expectancy table to determine the RMD? Who’s age makes the determination?



Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Mon, 2014-08-18 23:42

  1. Sorry to hear of your losses. It appears you now have 4 inherited accounts.  You inherited your own IRA directly from your brother. RMDs for that account only are based on your single life expectancy.
  2. The IRA inherited from your older sister will continue RMDs based on her life expectancy. You could determine the divisors by using the single life table for her age as of 12/31/2005 and reduce that divisor by 1.0 for each year since, which would be a reduction of 9.0 for 2014 from her first divisor in 2005. You cannot combine this inherited IRA with any of the others.
  3. The first IRA inherited from your second sister (the one she inherited directly from your brother) would continue to have RMDs based on her single life expectancy. The divisor would be her first divisor based on her age as of 12/31/2005 and would be reduced by 9.0 for the 2014 RMD, which you would have to take if she did not complete it.
  4. The second IRA inherited from your second sister that she had earlier inherited from your older sister would continue to have RMDs based on your older sister’s life expectancy based on her age on 12/31/2005 with that divisor reduced by 9.0 for 2014.
  5. In summary, the RMD divisors do not change from that which the original beneficiary would have used for 2014 had they lived. When setting up the latest inherited IRA, show only your name as beneficiary and the name of your second sister who you inherited the last two accounts from. You have 4 inherited IRAs here and two of them will have the same divisor, but you cannot combine them because the titles will be different.


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