Craig Wear, a CFP, explains what matters most when you inherit a retirement account: the deceased owner's age at death and whether they'd started taking required minimum distributions. The RMD starting age is now 72 or 73, and delaying your first distribution past December 31 means taking two distributions the next year.
The one piece of information that you need to know to go down this rabbit hole is you need to know how old was the account owner when they died and had they already started taking required minimum distribution. So required beginning date, which is the age at which someone's required to start distributions right now, is 72 or 73 years old for most people now. And you have to take your first required minimum distribution. You can take it by the December 31, but you can kick the can to the following April in the year after you reach that RMD age. If you wait till April, just know you got to do two that year, right? So the distribution rules are really different based on this one piece of info. How old was the account holder when they when they left it to you?
