Thanks for the response. I'm asking the question because we both took distributions individually before he passed away so I was filing an 8606 for each of us to determine taxability of his. Turbo tax initially took all his basis against his distribution since he has no account balance at the end of the tax year, the full balance is mine. Doing that seemed odd so I transferred his basis to mine and the taxes went up over 2K which got my attention. I know I'm stretching this, but there are some different rules regarding basis when it is a spouse compared to non-spouse and the word "can" is used instead of must so I hoped it left the door open for possibly taking the full basis in year of death.
