Inherited Roth IRAs face the same 10-year clock

Inherited Roth IRAs run on the same 10-year clock as inherited traditional IRAs. Sarah Brenner, director of retirement education at Ed Slott's IRAHelp, confirmed the point in the firm's Thursday mailbag. Under the SECURE Act, the 10-year rule applies to Roth accounts for non-eligible designated beneficiaries, the category that covers most nonspouse heirs. They have ten years to empty the account. Eligible designated beneficiaries can still stretch required minimum distributions across their own lifetimes.

The mailbag, which runs every Thursday on submitted questions, pairs that answer with a trust question that often arrives in the same meeting. A client with several IRAs asked whether moving them into a trust would simplify things for his children. Brenner's response cuts off the idea at the transfer step: an IRA cannot be assigned into a trust during the owner's lifetime, because that counts as a full distribution. The account must stay in the owner's name while the owner is alive. Naming a trust as beneficiary is permitted, but the beneficiary-trust rules are intricate enough that simplicity is not guaranteed.

Both answers remove a shortcut. The Roth label does not pause the SECURE Act clock for most heirs, and a trust does not simplify the transfer. The beneficiary classification the law draws between eligible and non-eligible designated beneficiaries applies to Roth accounts exactly as it applies to traditional ones. The only difference is the tax treatment of the dollars that come out. Roth dollars do not change the category; the rule follows the person, not the account.

The advisor's job is calendar work. An eligible beneficiary gets a lifetime schedule, and everyone else gets a deadline. The tax-free character of the Roth changes the amount that comes out, not the timing, which makes the mailbag a compact script for the next estate review. Clients who assume the Roth label buys them time can be walked through the countdown in a single conversation.