Successor Beneficiary RMD Requirements
I’m reviewing an inherited IRA situation and would like to confirm the proper RMD treatment.
A surviving spouse inherited both a Traditional IRA and a Roth IRA in 2012 and kept them separate from their own accounts. The spouse recently passed in early 2025, and their adult child is now the successor beneficiary.
My current understanding:
Traditional IRA: The spouse would have been taking RMDs based on their own life expectancy. The successor should now continue using that same schedule (a divisor of 4.9 for 2025 at age 92).
Roth IRA: Since it was never combined with the spouse’s own Roth, there should be no annual RMDs, but the 10-year rule applies (full distribution by 12/31/2035).
The contra firm is showing RMDs calculated on the successor’s life expectancy for both accounts, which I believe is incorrect.
Can you confirm whether this interpretation aligns with current IRS guidance?
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Wed, 2025-10-08 14:09
I am coming up with differences to both yours and the contra firm’s conclusions.
To determine whether the child is actually a successor beneficiary for RMD purposes, it would have to be determined if the SS fully completed each year’s beneficiary RMD, because if they fell short in any year they would have defaulted to ownership of these inherited IRAs in the first such year. If that occurred, then the child is a designated beneficiary rather than a successor beneficiary and that would be favorable for the child, particularly for the Roth IRA.
But assuming that the SS spouse actually fully completed every year’s beneficiary RMD on time, then the 4.9 divisor for 2025 would be reduced by 1.0 for each year after 2025 and both inherited IRAs would be drained in 2029. While the 10 year rule also applies, these IRAs will only last 4 more years.
The firm is incorrect as the successor’s age is irrelevant if they are actually successor beneficiaries, but if SS had defaulted to ownership, then the child is a designated beneficiary and could use their own single LE for the TIRA, and wait up to 10 years to drain or take distributions from the inherited Roth.
Few IRA custodians even consider the default rule, as that would take research going back to 2013 in this case. Sometimes that research is difficult to complete unless some prior tax return does not report any IRA distributions at all.
Quite frequently, surviving spouses fail to assume ownership of inherited IRAs and that results in higher RMDs and often a restricted distribution period for successor beneficiaries as in this situation.