Inherited IRA rules checker
Five questions to find out whether you must withdraw money every year, when the account has to be emptied, and what a missed deadline costs. Most people get this one wrong.
Open the checker →Free · No sign-up · Nothing to install
The paperwork after a death, one question at a time
When a parent dies you are handed a second job with no training and a lot of deadlines. These tools answer one question at a time, in plain language, so you can tell what has to happen this week and what can wait.
Start here
Executor first-week checklist
The ten things that actually have to happen in the first week, plus the calls that are easier to make before accounts get frozen.
Open the checklist →Inherited IRA RMD calculator
This year's required withdrawal, the life expectancy factor behind it, and a side-by-side view of what taking only the minimum costs you in year ten.
Open the calculator →Do you need probate?
Most of what a person owns never goes through probate. Subtract those assets, compare what is left against your state's small estate threshold, and find out whether an affidavit will do.
Open the checker →Guides
The year-ten tax bomb
Why taking only the required minimum for nine years is usually the most expensive path, and which years are worth withdrawing more.
Read →Inherited Roth IRA rules
No annual withdrawal required, one hard deadline, and a strategy that runs opposite to a traditional IRA.
Read →A surviving spouse has three options
Treat it as your own, keep it as inherited, or elect the ten-year rule. Age 59 and a half usually decides it.
Read →Missed a required withdrawal
The penalty is 25 percent, cut to 10 if corrected in time, and often waived entirely. The four steps to fix it.
Read →Who to notify when someone dies
Every organization that needs to be told, grouped by what it costs you to be late.
Read →How long this actually takes
Six to eighteen months, phase by phase, and the four things that reliably add to it.
Read →Why these tools exist
Search any of these questions and you will find a hundred articles explaining what the rule is. Almost none of them tell you which part of the rule applies to you, and that is the only part you need.
The inherited IRA rules are the clearest example. Whether you owe a withdrawal every year depends on four separate facts about the person who died and the account they left. Get it wrong in one direction and you pay tax years earlier than you had to. Get it wrong in the other and the penalty is a quarter of the amount you should have withdrawn.
What these tools are not
They are not advice, and they do not know your situation. They walk the same decision tree a professional would walk with you, so that when you do sit down with a CPA or an attorney you already know which questions matter and roughly what the answer should look like. That conversation goes faster and costs less when you arrive prepared.
Nothing here is stored. The tools run entirely in your browser, there is no account to create, and no answer you give is sent anywhere.
Educational information only. Not legal, tax, or financial advice. Rules change and vary by state. Confirm anything that matters with a licensed professional before acting on it.