Inheritance
An inheritance usually shows up in one of the hardest seasons of your life. Almost none of it needs to be decided this week, and a good plan starts by naming what can wait.
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If you've recently lost someone, the money questions can feel like one more weight in an already heavy season. So let me say the calmest true thing first: almost every inheritance decision can wait weeks or months without costing you anything. The accounts will still be there after the funeral, and after the fog lifts a little.
I encourage a decision-free zone at the start. Park cash somewhere safe and boring, leave investments where they are, and don't let anyone rush you into moving money, buying anything, or paying off anything. Grief and big financial decisions are a poor pairing, and the people pressing you to decide quickly are rarely the ones worth listening to.
When you're ready, the work is unhurried and mostly practical: understanding what you received, noting the few deadlines that apply, and deciding what this money should do for your own life.
Fewer than you might fear. Estate settlement moves at the executor's pace, often months, and most of it requires nothing from you. The main deadline to know: if you inherited a retirement account as a non-spouse beneficiary, the SECURE Act generally gives you ten years to empty it, with flexibility inside that window.
Ten years is a long runway. For a traditional inherited IRA, everything you withdraw is taxed as ordinary income in the year you take it, so the planning question is not whether you can meet the deadline but how to spread withdrawals across it. Spacing them around your own higher- and lower-income years usually beats emptying the account all at once.
The rules also have exceptions. Spouses have extra options, including treating an inherited IRA as their own, and certain beneficiaries, like someone close in age to the person who died, follow different timelines. We confirm exactly which rules apply to your account before anything moves.
Beyond retirement accounts, most deadlines belong to the estate itself: court filings, final tax returns, creditor notices. They're the executor's to manage, on the estate's timeline. If you happen to be the executor too, I help you keep those duties separate from your own inheritance decisions, because carrying both at once is a lot to ask of anyone.
A calm way to see the first year: almost everything is on your timeline, and the few exceptions are measured in years, not weeks.
| Decision | Typical timeline | What helps |
|---|---|---|
| Moving or investing cash | No deadline. It can sit in an insured, interest-bearing account as long as you need. | Park it safely and let it stay boring until you have a plan you like. |
| Selling inherited investments | No deadline, and inherited taxable holdings generally receive a stepped-up cost basis. | The step-up means selling soon after is rarely a big tax event; decide on the merits, not the calendar. |
| Inherited retirement accounts | The SECURE Act's 10-year rule applies to most non-spouse beneficiaries. | Plan withdrawals across the years around your own income instead of defaulting to all-at-once. |
| The family home | Usually months, set by the estate's own settlement process. | Let the estate close properly before committing to keep, rent, or sell. |
| Lifestyle changes | Whenever you choose; there is no clock on this one. | The upgrades made after a plan exists tend to be the ones that last. |
By answering the same questions as the rest of your money: what do you want this to make possible, and what would the person who left it have hoped for you? From there the work is practical. We revisit goals, investments, taxes, and your own estate documents with the new resources in view.
Sometimes an inheritance moves a retirement date. Sometimes it retires a mortgage, funds education, or simply adds margin so the plan bends less in rough markets. And part of stewarding it well is unglamorous: updating your own beneficiary designations and estate documents so the next handoff is as clear as you'd want this one to have been.
A few patterns show up often enough in first-year inheritances that naming them helps:
None of these are moral failures. They're what grief does when it meets money, and each one is easier to avoid once a plan exists and someone patient is walking through it with you.
Jesse Plunkett, CEPA®, CRPC®
Financial advisor in Sanford, FL, serving clients across the country virtually. Meet your advisor, or check my record on 
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A quick, useful starting point
A quick self-check. Retirees tend to assume the worst about their own situation more often than the numbers actually support. This helps you see where you actually stand.
There's no clock on this conversation. A short, low-key call: we start with what you received and what you'd like it to do, and go from there.
Very little, and slowly. Park cash somewhere safe and insured, leave investments where they are, and give yourself weeks or months before making anything permanent. The only early tasks are practical: get copies of the death certificate, keep records, and find out whether you've inherited a retirement account, which has its own rules.
Usually not at the federal level. There is no federal inheritance tax on what you receive, and any federal estate tax is the estate's to pay before assets reach you. A handful of states do charge inheritance taxes. The big exception is inherited retirement accounts: withdrawals from a traditional inherited IRA are taxed to you as ordinary income.
Under the SECURE Act, most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty an inherited IRA by the end of the tenth year after the original owner's death. Spouses and certain other beneficiaries follow different rules. Within the ten years, when you withdraw is largely up to you, which turns the deadline into a tax-planning opportunity.
Yes, and there's no deadline forcing a sale. Inherited taxable investments generally receive a stepped-up cost basis, meaning the growth that happened before you inherited them is not taxed to you, so selling soon after is often a smaller tax event than expected. The better question is whether you'd buy that same concentrated position today; if not, it may be sentiment rather than strategy holding it.
It joins the plan rather than replacing it. We revisit your goals with the new resources in view: whether a retirement date moves, whether debt gets retired, how the money is invested alongside what you already have, and what it means for your own estate documents and beneficiary designations. The numbers change; the process that protects you doesn't.
Almost always. Everything is handled virtually, so where you live is rarely a barrier. The only exception is a handful of states where I'm not registered yet, and if that's you, I'll tell you on our first call.