Inherited IRA Rules | 10-Year Clock and RMDs

Your category, your annual-RMD answer, your deadline

Which beneficiary are you?

The ten-year rule and RMDs inside it

Trusts, charities and unusual beneficiaries

Account types and state tax

Other inherited-account questions

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Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: almost everyone who inherits a retirement account now has ten years to empty it, and the expensive detail is that some beneficiaries must ALSO take an annual distribution in each of those ten years. Which case you are in depends on who you are and on whether the original owner had already started their own required distributions. A surviving spouse has options nobody else has and can make them worse by choosing quickly. A short list of eligible designated beneficiaries – minor children of the owner, the disabled and chronically ill, and beneficiaries close in age to the owner – keep a lifetime stretch. Everyone else is on the clock. Work out your category first; every other decision follows from it.

Your category, your annual-RMD answer, your deadline

Everything below this table is a list of pages. This is the table those pages resolve to. Categories are measured as of the date of death, and the deadline column assumes no plan provision or election overrides the default. Whether the original owner had already started is itself a table question: the Uniform Lifetime divisors that set an owner’s own required distribution are unchanged for 2027.

If you are	Annual distributions inside the window?	The account must be empty by
The surviving spouse	Depends on the route taken. Life-expectancy payments if the account stays inherited; the spouse’s own RMD schedule if it is treated as their own or rolled over.	No fixed emptying date while life-expectancy payments run. Rolling it over ends the question entirely.
A child of the owner under 21	Yes — annual life-expectancy payments until the 21st birthday, then annual distributions continue through the ten years that follow.	The end of the calendar year containing the tenth anniversary of the 21st birthday, not of the death.
Disabled or chronically ill	Yes — annual life-expectancy payments.	No fixed date during their life. On their death, the end of the calendar year containing the tenth anniversary of that death.
Not more than ten years younger than the owner	Yes — annual life-expectancy payments.	No fixed date during their life. On their death, the end of the calendar year containing the tenth anniversary of that death.
Any other individual — an adult child, a sibling, a friend, an unmarried partner	Only if the owner died on or after their required beginning date. If they died before it, nothing is required until the final year.	The end of the calendar year containing the tenth anniversary of the death — the year-by-year table.
Not an individual — an estate, a charity, or a trust that does not look through	There is no designated beneficiary. If the owner died on or after their required beginning date, distributions run on the owner’s own remaining life expectancy.	Death before the required beginning date puts it on the five-year rule instead. Death on or after it has no single emptying date.

The deadline column is set by Treas. Reg. §1.401(a)(9)-3(c)(3) and (c)(5), §1.401(a)(9)-4(e), §1.401(a)(9)-5(d)(1) and (e)(2) to (e)(4), and section 401(a)(9)(H)(iii), all as adopted by T.D. 10001, 89 FR 58886 (19 July 2024). The deadline by year of death page carries the quoted text and the 2020–2026 dates, including what the 2021–2024 IRS relief did and did not move.

Which beneficiary are you?

The ten-year rule and RMDs inside it

Trusts, charities and unusual beneficiaries

Account types and state tax

Protection is a separate question from tax: a 401(k) and an IRA are not equally protected, and a rollover changes which rules apply — ERISA covers the plan in every state, while an IRA falls back on whatever your state provides.

Inherited IRA Rules: the 10-Year Clock, the RMD Trap, and Who Is Exempt

What this guide covers

Your category, your annual-RMD answer, your deadline

Which beneficiary are you?

The ten-year rule and RMDs inside it

Trusts, charities and unusual beneficiaries

Account types and state tax

Other inherited-account questions

Related guides

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