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: Never. Your own accounts and inherited accounts are entirely separate for this purpose — and inherited accounts from different decedents cannot be combined with each other either. Each stream is computed and taken independently.
Three separate universes
| Accounts | Aggregate together? |
|---|---|
| Your own IRAs | Yes, with each other |
| Your own IRAs + an inherited IRA | No |
| Inherited from Mum + inherited from Dad | No — separate decedents |
| Two inherited IRAs from the same decedent | Generally yes |
Someone who inherits from both parents and has their own IRA can be running three independent distribution schedules with three different calculations and three different deadlines — and no custodian sees more than one of them. This is where shortfalls happen, and each one attracts its own excise tax.
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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Different rules, not just different accounts
An inherited account may also require annual distributions inside a 10-year window — depending on when the decedent died — which is a different obligation from your own lifetime RMD, computed a different way.
Keep a single register
One sheet listing every account, its type, whose it was, and its annual requirement. It sounds trivial and it is the only thing that reliably prevents a shortfall across accounts nobody is looking at together.
Sources
IRC §401(a)(9) (required minimum distributions); IRC §408(d)(8) (qualified charitable distributions); IRC §4974 (excise tax on shortfalls, as amended by SECURE 2.0); SECURE Act (2019) and SECURE 2.0 (2022); final RMD regulations published 19 July 2024. Cross-checked July 2026 against professional analyses. Indexed dollar limits and correction windows are described rather than asserted.
This states what the cited authority says. It is not tax advice.