Who Should I Talk To After Inheriting an IRA — and What Should I Ask Them?

Your parent died, you’re named on their IRA, and somewhere in the fog of the past few weeks you’ve realized this is going to need a professional. Fine — but which one? You’ve got a brokerage rep leaving voicemails, a sibling telling you to “call the estate lawyer,” and a vague sense that an accountant belongs in here somewhere. Figuring out who to talk to after inheriting an IRA is its own small problem on top of the grief, and the order you call people in actually matters.

So here’s the honest map. There are four kinds of professionals who might touch an inherited IRA, they do genuinely different jobs, and only one of those jobs is ours. I’m going to tell you what each one handles, when they’re the right first call, and the specific questions to ask so you can tell whether the person across the desk actually knows inherited-IRA rules — or is winging it.

Who should I actually call first?

A tax planner or an estate attorney — almost never the brokerage. The single most expensive mistakes here happen when someone calls the IRA custodian first, follows a well-meaning rep’s instructions, and moves the money before anyone has looked at the tax or legal picture.

That’s the headline. The custodian’s job is to execute paperwork, and they’ll happily execute the wrong paperwork if you ask. Figure out the plan first, then have them carry it out. Which of the two — tax planner or attorney — leads depends on your situation, and I’ll lay out exactly when each one is the front of the line.

What does each professional actually handle?

Four different people, four different jobs:

• The IRA custodian or brokerage holds the account and does the mechanical work: retitling it as an inherited IRA, moving it by trustee-to-trustee transfer, processing the beneficiary paperwork.
• The estate or estate-planning attorney handles the legal chain of title: probate, a trust named as the beneficiary, disclaimers, and any situation where it’s unclear or contested who actually inherits.
• The tax planner sizes and times the tax — the 10-year-rule math, required distributions, and keeping the withdrawals out of your worst brackets. This is the slice that’s us.
• The financial advisor invests the inherited money and folds it into your broader plan.

Plenty of people need only one or two of these, not all four. Let me go through them in the order you’d usually call.

The IRA custodian / brokerage — what do they do, and what should I ask?

They retitle the account and move the money — nothing more. The custodian is the bank or brokerage where the IRA lives. They are not your advisor, even when the person on the phone is helpful and uses the word “advisor.” Their job is to open a properly titled inherited IRA and transfer the assets into it.

The reason they come up so early — and the reason they’re dangerous early — is that one wrong instruction here is permanent. As a non-spouse beneficiary you cannot roll an inherited IRA into your own IRA, and you cannot take a check and redeposit it within 60 days the way an account owner can. The only safe move is a direct trustee-to-trustee transfer into an account titled something like “Jane Parent, deceased, for the benefit of John Child, beneficiary.” If the custodian instead cuts you a check, the whole balance is treated as distributed and taxable the moment it lands. The permission for the non-spouse direct transfer is IRC § 402(c)(11); there is no 60-day version of it. We walk through that trap in detail in the inherited IRA 10-year rule guide.

Questions to ask the custodian:

• “Can you retitle this as an inherited IRA — ‘[parent], deceased, for the benefit of [me], beneficiary’ — rather than moving it into my own name?”
• “Will you do a direct trustee-to-trustee transfer if I decide to move it elsewhere, or do you only issue a check?”
• “What’s the beneficiary designation you have on file, and is that the document that controls who inherits?”
• “Did my parent take their full required distribution for the year they died? If not, how much is left?”

If a rep tells you to “just take the distribution and we’ll sort it out,” stop and call a tax planner before you sign anything. That instruction is how a $300,000 inheritance becomes a $300,000 tax bill in one year.

The estate or estate-planning attorney — when are they the first call, and what should I ask?

When the chain of title is anything but clean, the attorney leads — and honestly, that’s more often than people expect. If your situation has any of the following, an estate attorney should be your first call, ahead of us: a trust is named as the IRA’s beneficiary; no beneficiary is named at all; the named beneficiary is an ex-spouse, or someone who died before your parent; the designation is ambiguous or contested; or you’re thinking about disclaiming part of the inheritance to pass it to someone else.

Three things make this legal territory, not tax territory. First, a beneficiary form on file with the custodian generally overrides the will — so if the form names your father’s ex-wife and the will leaves everything to you, the custodian is obligated to pay the ex-wife unless an attorney untangles it. Second, when a trust is the beneficiary, whether it qualifies as a “see-through” trust under the Treasury regulations (Treas. Reg. § 1.401(a)(9)-4) decides whether you get the 10-year payout or a much faster, more punishing one — and only a lawyer can read the trust language and tell you which kind you have. Third, a disclaimer — formally refusing the inheritance so it passes to the next beneficiary in line — only works if it’s a qualified disclaimer under IRC § 2518: in writing, before you’ve accepted any of the money, and within nine months of the death. Miss that window or touch the money first, and the option is gone.

There’s a real tax consequence riding on the attorney’s work, too. If there’s no qualifying designated beneficiary — the estate inherits, or a trust that fails the see-through test — and your parent died before their required beginning date, the account can fall under a five-year payout instead of ten, compressing the tax bill into half the time. That’s the kind of outcome you want caught before the account moves, not after.

Questions to ask the estate attorney:

• “Does the beneficiary form on file control this IRA, or does the will? Which one wins if they disagree?”
• “If a trust is the beneficiary, does it meet the see-through requirements — and is it a conduit or an accumulation trust? What does that do to my payout window and the tax rate?”
• “Should I consider a qualified disclaimer, and exactly what’s my deadline?”
• “There’s no living named beneficiary — does this go through probate, and does that put me on the five-year rule instead of ten?”

If your case is the messy one, paying an attorney to get the title right is the cheapest money you’ll spend in this whole process. The trust-as-beneficiary situation in particular has its own tax surprises that deserve a dedicated look.

The tax planner — where do you fit, and what should I ask?

We come in once the account is properly titled and the legal questions are settled — and our job is the tax, which over ten years is usually the biggest number in the whole thing. A tax planner answers the questions that decide what you actually keep: which distribution rules apply to you, whether you owe a required amount each year, and how to size ten years of withdrawals so the money doesn’t come out in your highest bracket.

The first thing we pin down is your beneficiary status, because it sets everything else. Most non-spouse beneficiaries are “designated beneficiaries” on the 10-year rule (the account empties by the end of year ten, under IRC § 401(a)(9)(H)). A narrower group — a surviving spouse, a minor child of the owner, someone disabled or chronically ill, or a beneficiary less than ten years younger than your parent — are “eligible designated beneficiaries” with different, often gentler options. Then comes the question that trips up almost everyone: whether your parent died before or after their required beginning date, because that’s what decides whether you owe an annual required distribution in years one through nine or simply have to empty the account by year ten. We unpack that whole fork in the 10-year rule guide, and the year-by-year withdrawal math in our inherited IRA withdrawal strategy guide.

Questions to ask a tax planner (and these double as a test of whether they know this area):

• “Am I a designated beneficiary or an eligible designated beneficiary — and which distribution rule does that put me on?”
• “Did my parent die before or after their required beginning date, and does that mean I owe an annual distribution or just have to empty it by year ten?”
• “Is there a year-of-death required distribution I still need to take — and if one was missed, how do we fix the penalty?”
• “How should I spread the withdrawals across ten years against my brackets, my Medicare premium thresholds, and the ACA subsidy cliff?”

If a tax preparer hears “inherited IRA” and immediately says “just take it over ten equal years” without asking when your parent died or what your income looks like, that’s a sign they’re treating a planning problem like a data-entry one. A missed required distribution gets reported and fixed on Form 5329, and the year-of-death distribution shows up on a Form 1099-R with a death-distribution code — a planner who knows the area will raise both without being prompted.

The financial advisor — what do they handle, and what should I ask?

They manage how the inherited money is invested and how it fits your larger financial life. An advisor is genuinely useful once the account is titled and the tax plan is set — especially if the IRA is a large share of your net worth, or you don’t have an investment plan of your own. The thing to keep in mind is that an inherited IRA has a hard ten-year shelf life, so it shouldn’t be invested like a 30-year retirement account. The withdrawal schedule and the investment mix have to talk to each other.

One honest caution, since I’d want a family member to hear it: many advisors are paid a percentage of the assets they manage, which gives them a built-in reason to keep the money in the account as long as possible — the opposite of what the 10-year rule and good tax planning often call for. That doesn’t make advisors the bad guys; it just means you should understand how yours is paid and make sure the investment plan is serving your tax plan, not fighting it.

Questions to ask a financial advisor:

• “How should this be invested given I have to fully liquidate it within ten years, not hold it for decades?”
• “Will you coordinate the withdrawal timing with my tax planner, or are you only managing the investments?”
• “How are you paid — a flat fee, a percentage of assets, or commissions — and are you a fiduciary?”
• “How does this account change my overall plan, and what should I do with the money as it comes out?”

Do I need all four — or sometimes nobody at all?

Often you need one or two, and occasionally none beyond a single phone call. The honest answer is that most people do not need the full cast. Here’s a rough sort:

• If you’re the sole, clearly named individual beneficiary, the account is modest, and you understand the 10-year rule, you may need nothing more than the custodian to retitle it correctly and a one-time tax check to confirm your withdrawal pace. Don’t go hire a team for a simple inheritance.
• If the balance is large or your income is high, add a tax planner — the withdrawal sizing is where the real money is, and it compounds over ten years.
• If a trust is involved, no beneficiary is named, the designation is contested or outdated, or you’re weighing a disclaimer, start with an estate attorney before anyone else.
• If you don’t have an investment plan for the money, add a financial advisor once the tax plan exists.

The mistake in both directions is real: some people call nobody and cash a check they should never have cashed, and others assemble a four-person committee for an inheritance that needed one retitling form and an afternoon of planning. Match the help to the complexity.

What’s the one mistake that makes calling the wrong person first irreversible?

Moving the money before anyone has looked at it. Almost every permanent error in this process — the cashed check, the missed disclaimer deadline, the trust that quietly defaulted to a faster payout — happens because the account moved before the plan existed.

A disclaimer can’t be unwound after nine months or after you’ve touched the money. A check made out to you personally can’t be put back. A trust’s payout window is set by its own language, not by what you wish it said. None of these are fixable on the back end, which is exactly why the order matters: settle the legal and tax questions first, and let the custodian move the money last. The good news is that almost nothing here has to happen in the first week — you have time to make the calls in the right order.

What should I do first?

Three steps, in order. First, do not authorize any distribution or transfer yet — just confirm with the custodian who the beneficiary on file is, and whether your parent’s final-year distribution was taken. Second, decide which lane you’re in: if there’s a trust, a missing or contested beneficiary, or a possible disclaimer, call an estate attorney; otherwise, call a tax planner to confirm your beneficiary status and the distribution rules. Third, once the account is titled correctly and the plan is set, let the custodian move the money and bring in an advisor if you need one for the investments.

If the part you want a hand with is the tax — confirming which distribution rules apply to you, whether you owe an annual amount, and how to size the ten-year draw-down against your actual brackets — that’s the slice we do, and it’s the core of our inherited IRA tax planning. Book a remote consult with our office. And if what you actually need first is an estate attorney to untangle a trust or a beneficiary problem, that’s a real answer too — get that settled first, and the tax planning will be waiting when you’re ready.

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.