The law change is based on the date of death. The rules vary depending on eligible designated beneficiary or simply a designated beneficiary.
From Beneficiaries: An eligible designated beneficiary is
- Spouse or minor child of the deceased account holder
- Disabled or chronically ill individual
- Individual who is not more than 10 years younger than the IRA owner or plan participant
For your mother's IRA, if you are a designated beneficiary, you would have 10 years. If you are disabled or have chronic health issues, you could qualify as an eligible designated beneficiary. An eligible designated beneficiary may:
- Take distributions over the longer of their own life expectancy and the employee's remaining life expectancy, or
- Follow the 10-year rule (if the account owner died before that owner's required beginning date)
As for your father's IRA, I will assume that your mother was taking the RMD each year and following these rules from IRS Beneficiaries:
Death of the account holder occurred before 2020
Spousal beneficiary options
If the death of the account holder occurred prior to the required beginning date, the spousal beneficiary's options are:
- Keep as an inherited account
- Take distributions based on their own life expectancy, or
- Follow the 5-year rule
- Rollover the account into their own IRA
This would mean that you are inheriting this account from your mother, despite it being in your dad's name. You would follow the same rules for either eligible designated or designated above.
I am very sorry for the loss of both parents.
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