A:
There is no rule prohibiting a surviving spouse from rolling their deceased spouse’s IRA into the survivor’s IRA or into an inherited IRA and then into the survivor’s personal IRA. The same can be said for Roth IRAs. Only spouses have this ability. Everyone else, either takes the funds as an inherited account or must cash out within five years and pay any applicable taxes.
You were smart to keep his IRA in an inherited IRA instead of automatically rolling it into your own because once it is in your IRA, the funds are treated as if they were always yours. Since you are under 59½, that would mean being subject to the 10% penalty for early distributions should you need cash.
By leaving the money in an inherited IRA, withdrawals will be taxed but the exception for death will avoid the 10% penalty. Once you reach 59 ½ or get close enough to that age that you don’t think you will need a withdrawal, you can then roll it into your own IRA.
Another good reason to roll the inherited IRA into your own IRA is that if desired, you can convert funds in your own IRA to a Roth IRA but conversions from an inherited IRA are not permitted.
With an inherited Roth IRA, most spouses roll those into their own Roth IRA because
there are no Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from an individual's
