My Parent Wasn't Taking Their Required RMDs - How Does My Inherited IRA 10-Year Rule Work?

You’re going through your father’s paperwork after the funeral, and you find the IRA statements. He turned 76 a couple of years ago, well past the age the IRS makes people start drawing these accounts down — but the statements show no withdrawals. Somewhere along the way he just stopped taking them, or maybe never started. Now two cold thoughts hit at once: has my ten-year clock been running since he was supposed to start, so I’ve already burned years of it? And am I on the hook for all the distributions he skipped? That’s the inherited IRA, parent didn’t take RMD problem in a nutshell.

Take a breath. An inherited IRA where the parent wasn’t taking their RMDs feels like you’ve inherited a mess with a clock already half-run, but the two things scaring you are mostly separate problems, and one of them isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds. The short version: your ten-year clock starts the year after he died — not back when his withdrawals should have begun — and the distributions he missed break into two buckets that get handled very differently. Let me walk through both.

Does my 10-year clock start when my parent died, or when their RMDs should have begun?

It starts the year after your parent died. Not when their required distributions should have started, not on some date tied to their age — the year after death, period.

So if your father died in 2025, your ten-year window runs through December 31, 2035. The fact that he was supposed to be taking withdrawals for years before he died, and wasn’t, does not move that starting line one day earlier. You did not inherit a clock that’s already been ticking since he turned 73. This is the single most common fear in your situation, and it’s misplaced. The ten-year rule that came out of the SECURE Act (IRC § 401(a)(9)(H)) measures the deadline from the year of death — the year-after-death start applies whether or not your parent had begun taking distributions.

What your parent’s age and withdrawal history do affect is a different question: not when the window closes, but whether you have to take a required amount each year along the way. That’s the pre- versus post-required-beginning-date fork, and we walk through it in full in our guide to the inherited IRA 10-year rule. Here I want to focus on the part that’s specific to your situation — a parent who had reached that point but wasn’t complying.

My parent reached RMD age but wasn’t taking the distributions — does that change my rule?

No. What puts you in the “take a required amount every year” camp is that your parent had reached their required beginning date — not whether they actually took the money out.

This is the distinction that trips people up. They reason: “Dad wasn’t taking RMDs, so it’s as if he never started, so I must be in the easier camp where I can just let it sit and empty it by year ten.” That’s wrong, and it’s an expensive way to be wrong. The rule turns on a date, not on his behavior. The required beginning date is April 1 of the year after a traditional-IRA owner reaches their RMD age — generally 73 today, rising to 75 for people born in 1960 or later. Once that date passes on the calendar, your parent has “reached” it as a matter of law, whether they took a single dollar or not. He doesn’t get demoted back to the pre-RBD camp because he ignored the rule.

So because your father reached his required beginning date before he died, you are required to take an annual distribution in each of years one through nine, based on your own life expectancy, and empty whatever remains by the end of year ten. His non-compliance didn’t buy you the more flexible treatment — if anything, it left you more cleanup, not less.

There is one genuine exception worth checking, and it’s about timing, not compliance: if your parent died in the same year they hit their RMD age but before the following April 1, they technically died before their required beginning date — which would flip you into the no-annual-RMD camp. That’s a narrow window and it’s the kind of close call worth confirming. The full pre/post breakdown lives in the 10-year rule guide; for the rest of this article I’m assuming what you described — a parent who was clearly years past their start date.

What about the RMD my parent didn’t take in the year they died?

That one becomes your responsibility, and you should take it — but the deadline is more forgiving than it first looks. If your parent hadn’t taken their full required distribution for the year they died, the unsatisfied amount has to come out of the account, and it’s taxed to you, the beneficiary, not to the estate.

The technical deadline is December 31 of the year of death, which is alarming if your parent died in, say, November and you didn’t even have the account retitled yet. Here’s the relief: the 2024 final regulations grant an automatic waiver of the penalty as long as you take that year-of-death distribution by your own tax-filing deadline, including extensions, for the year your parent died. So in practice you generally have until the following April 15 — or October 15 if you extend — not December 31. You don’t have to ask for that waiver; it applies automatically (Treas. Reg. § 54.4974-1).

A few practical notes. The amount is calculated as if your parent were still alive — it’s their required distribution for that year, based on their age, not yours. If there are several beneficiaries, the total just has to come out; it doesn’t have to be split evenly. And it gets reported to you on a Form 1099-R with a death-distribution code. This is the obligation heirs miss most often, because it lands in the worst possible month and the custodian usually won’t chase you for it — so put it on your list now.

What about the RMDs my parent skipped in years before they died?

Those are a separate problem, and they belong to your parent’s estate — not to your inherited IRA going forward. An RMD your parent failed to take in, say, 2022 or 2023 was their obligation while they were alive, so the excise tax for missing it is a liability of the decedent, handled at the estate level.

The cleanup is the same mechanism either way: the missed amount should be distributed as soon as possible, and a Form 5329 is filed for each year a distribution was missed to report the excise tax and request a waiver for reasonable cause. The penalty under IRC § 4974 is 25% of the shortfall, dropping to 10% if it’s corrected within the correction window (generally the end of the second year after the year of the miss). Unlike the year-of-death distribution, there’s no automatic waiver for these earlier years — but the IRS routinely grants the reasonable-cause waiver when the miss is honest and you fix it promptly, which is the norm when a parent’s health was failing in their final years. If you’re the executor as well as the beneficiary, this is a job to raise with whoever is settling the estate; don’t quietly fold it into your own account and hope it disappears.

One important boundary so you don’t double-count: this is your parent’s missed distributions, cleaned up through the estate. It’s a different thing from a required distribution that you miss on the inherited account after you take it over. If that’s your worry, the fix for your own miss is its own process — start with our guide to fixing a missed inherited-IRA RMD.

So I really do owe a required distribution every year now?

Yes. Because your parent had reached their required beginning date, you take a required minimum distribution in each of years one through nine and clear out the rest by the end of year ten. The annual amount is based on your own life expectancy, so for an adult child inheriting in middle age it’s a fairly small slice each year — which is exactly why it’s easy to forget.

And the penalty for skipping one of your annual distributions is the same § 4974 excise tax: 25% of what you should have taken, reduced to 10% if you correct it inside the window. The years-long penalty waivers the IRS granted while the rules were being sorted out ended after 2024 — annual distributions are fully required starting in 2025, with no relief to fall back on. If you realize you’ve already skipped one, don’t panic and don’t ignore it; take the late distribution and file. The repair, and the reasonable-cause waiver that usually goes with it, is the whole subject of our guide to fixing a missed inherited-IRA RMD.

How do I size the withdrawals so year ten isn’t a tax bomb?

Treat the ten years as a planning window, not a countdown to one giant withdrawal. Taking only the required minimum each year feels safe, but it leaves most of the balance to come out in a single year-ten lump, stacked on top of whatever income you have then — often the worst tax outcome available.

The better approach is to pull money out deliberately in your lower-income years, filling up the cheaper tax brackets and stopping short of the income lines that cost extra. That’s a real plan with real numbers, and it’s the heart of our guide to how much to withdraw from an inherited IRA each year. Because your account carries mandatory annual distributions, your floor each year is “at least the required amount” and your ceiling is “before I cross into a higher bracket or trip a surcharge” — the planning happens in the space between.

What should I do first?

Three things, in order. First, confirm the timing: pull the date your parent reached their RMD age and the date they died, so you know for certain you’re in the annual-distribution camp (and aren’t caught by that narrow same-year exception). Second, handle the year-of-death distribution — check whether your parent took their full required amount for the year they died, and if not, take the rest before your tax-filing deadline. Third, raise the earlier skipped years with whoever is settling the estate, so the Form 5329 cleanup gets done rather than ignored.

After that, it’s a multi-year withdrawal plan, not a single emergency. If you’d rather have someone confirm which camp you’re in, calculate the year-of-death amount, and map the ten-year draw-down against your actual income, that’s exactly what our inherited IRA tax planning is for. Book a remote consult with our office — it’s a great deal cheaper to plan this out than to unwind a penalty or a botched distribution after the fact.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, or financial advice. Tax law is highly fact-specific and subject to change. Always consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.