Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
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Updated July 28, 2026. Quick answer: You generally inherit the remaining clock, not a new one. If the person you inherited from was seven years into their 10-year window, you have roughly three years — not ten.
The clock does not restart
This is the whole page. People reasonably assume a new inheritance means a new ten years. For a successor beneficiary it generally does not: you step into the existing schedule and finish it.
| Original beneficiary was… | You generally get |
|---|---|
| 2 years into a 10-year window | The remaining ~8 years |
| 9 years into a 10-year window | Roughly a year |
| Stretching as an EDB | A 10-year window beginning on their death |
A very short remaining window can force a large distribution into one or two tax years with no way to spread it. If you are a successor beneficiary, establish the original owner’s date of death before planning anything — that date, not the recent one, usually governs.
Get the inherited-account decision right the first time
Deciding when to take money out of an inherited account is a tax question as much as a rules question, and an adviser can price the withdrawal schedule against the rest of your income before a deadline sets the timing for you.
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Why this is under-covered
It is a second-order case, so general guides skip it. It is also increasingly common, because the 10-year rule means far more accounts are mid-window when a beneficiary dies than was true under the old stretch regime.
Sources
Final regulations on required minimum distributions, published 19 July 2024; SECURE Act (2019) and SECURE 2.0 (2022); IRC §401(a)(9); IRC §2518 (qualified disclaimers); IRC §408(d)(8) (qualified charitable distributions). Cross-checked July 2026 against professional analyses from Kitces, Grant Thornton, Ascensus, Charles Schwab and Kiplinger. Where a deadline or dollar figure is indexed or was not read in primary source for this page, the text says so rather than asserting it.
This states what the cited authority says. It is not tax advice, and inherited account deadlines turn on facts about the decedent and the plan that no page can verify for you.