How RMDs Work for Married Couples: Inheritance, Divorce, and Fixes

RMDs for married couples follow the same basic formula that applies to any retirement account owner, with two layers of spousal advantage stacked on top: while both spouses are alive, a much-younger spouse named as sole beneficiary can lower the annual withdrawal, and after one spouse dies, the survivor has inheritance choices no other beneficiary gets. Each spouse still calculates required minimum distributions on their own accounts, using their own age, starting the year they turn 73.¹ What marriage changes is which table you use and what happens when one of you dies.

Calculating Each Spouse’s RMD While Both Are Alive

The mechanics are simple. Take the account balance on the prior December 31, divide by a life expectancy factor from an IRS table, and withdraw at least that amount by December 31 of the current year. Miss it, and the shortfall is hit with a 25% excise tax.²

Married or single, most account owners use the Uniform Lifetime Table. It builds in an assumed beneficiary ten years younger than the owner, which produces a longer distribution period and a smaller annual withdrawal.² The spousal exception: if your spouse is your sole beneficiary and is more than ten years younger than you, you use the Joint Life and Last Survivor Expectancy Table instead. That table uses your actual combined ages rather than the built-in ten-year assumption, and it stretches the distribution period further. A 76-year-old with a 63-year-old spouse, for example, gets a meaningfully longer period under the joint table than under the Uniform Lifetime Table, which shrinks the annual RMD. Your spouse has to be documented as the sole beneficiary with your plan custodian for the calendar year in question.

The First-Year Timing Decision

The first RMD is for the year you turn 73, but you’re allowed to delay it until April 1 of the following year.² The catch is that the second-year RMD is still due December 31 of that same year, so delaying doubles up the income. On a joint return, the bunched income can push you into a higher bracket, raise Medicare premium surcharges, and make more of your Social Security taxable. Taking the first RMD in the year you turn 73 usually costs less in tax than delaying it.

The Year One Spouse Dies

If the deceased spouse hadn’t taken their full RMD for the year of death, the obligation carries over to the beneficiary, which is almost always the surviving spouse. That final RMD is calculated the same way the deceased would have calculated it and must be withdrawn by December 31 of the year of death. It applies no matter which inheritance option the surviving spouse eventually picks.

Inheritance Choices Only a Spouse Has

After one spouse dies, the survivor has options no other beneficiary gets, and the choice controls the RMD schedule for the rest of the survivor’s life. The ten-year distribution rule that forces most non-spouse beneficiaries to empty an inherited account within a decade does not apply to a surviving spouse.³

Spousal rollover: move the inherited assets into your own IRA (existing or new). The RMD clock restarts on your age.
Inherited IRA: keep the account titled as inherited. This preserves penalty-free access before age 59½.
Election to be treated as the deceased spouse: under SECURE 2.0, you can have RMDs calculated as if your late spouse were still alive, delaying distributions until they would have reached their required beginning date.

When the Rollover Is the Right Choice

Rolling the inherited assets into your own IRA gives you maximum deferral. Once the money is yours, no RMD is due until you reach 73.³ If you’re already 73 or older, RMDs begin the year of the rollover, calculated on your Uniform Lifetime Table factor. The downside: the funds are now subject to the standard early withdrawal rules, so a survivor under 59½ who taps them pays the 10% penalty plus income tax.

When the Inherited IRA Is the Right Choice

Keeping the account as an inherited IRA lets a younger survivor take distributions at any age without the 10% early withdrawal penalty.⁴ Income tax still applies, but avoiding the penalty can matter to a spouse in their fifties.

If the deceased spouse had already reached RMD age, the survivor must continue annual distributions using the Single Life Expectancy Table (Table I). If the deceased had not yet reached RMD age, the survivor can wait to begin distributions until the year the deceased spouse would have turned 73.⁵

You are not locked in. A surviving spouse who keeps the inherited IRA for penalty-free access during working years can later roll it into their own IRA before turning 73, moving from Table I to the Uniform Lifetime Table’s more favorable factors.

How the Calculation Actually Works After Each Choice

After a spousal rollover, the inherited money merges into your IRA and loses its separate identity. Use your December 31 balance, divide by your Uniform Lifetime Table factor (or Joint Life Table factor if a much-younger spouse is your sole beneficiary), and distribute by December 31.

From an inherited IRA, two things change. First, you use the Single Life Expectancy Table, whose shorter factors produce larger annual RMDs than the Uniform Lifetime Table.⁵ Second, a surviving spouse gets to look up their current age in Table I each year and recalculate, rather than taking a starting factor and subtracting one each subsequent year the way non-spouse beneficiaries do.⁶ Recalculating produces slightly smaller RMDs over time.

Aggregation Limits

If you own your own IRA and also hold an inherited IRA, you cannot cover both RMDs with a single withdrawal. Each account type has its own RMD, and the inherited account’s RMD must come from the inherited account. You can aggregate multiple traditional IRAs you own and take one combined distribution from any of them. You can also aggregate inherited IRAs received from the same decedent. What you can’t do is mix inherited and non-inherited accounts.²

Roth IRAs and Married Couples

Roth IRA owners never take RMDs during their lifetime.² After the owner dies, a surviving spouse can roll the inherited Roth into their own Roth, which makes them the new owner and keeps the no-RMD treatment in place for the rest of their life.⁵

If the survivor keeps the account as an inherited Roth instead, annual distributions using the Single Life Expectancy Table apply.⁶ Those distributions are tax-free, but forcing money out of a tax-free account when it isn’t needed wastes the Roth’s core benefit.⁵ Rolling it over is almost always the better move.

Charitable Distributions Count Per Spouse

A Qualified Charitable Distribution sends money directly from an IRA to a qualifying charity, satisfying part or all of your RMD without adding to taxable income. You have to be 70½ or older to make one.⁷

For 2026, each individual can exclude up to $111,000 in QCDs from gross income.⁸ The cap is per person, so a married couple with both spouses 70½ or older can direct up to $222,000 to charity tax-free in a single year, provided each spouse makes their QCD from their own IRA. One spouse can’t use their IRA to cover the other spouse’s limit. QCDs are especially useful for couples who don’t itemize, because the exclusion works regardless of whether you take the standard deduction.

Divorce Splits the Account, Not the RMD

An IRA transferred from one spouse to the other under a divorce or separation agreement is not a taxable event. The transferred IRA becomes the receiving spouse’s own IRA.⁹ The receiving spouse calculates RMDs going forward using their own age and their own beneficiary designations, as though they had always owned it. QDROs, worth noting because people often assume they apply everywhere, are only for employer plans like 401(k)s; IRA splits are handled through the divorce decree itself.

Fixing a Missed RMD

A missed RMD, or a distribution short of the required amount, is subject to a 25% excise tax on the shortfall.² The rate drops to 10% if you correct the mistake within the correction window, which generally ends at the later of two years after the tax year the penalty was imposed or the date the IRS assesses the tax or sends a deficiency notice. To get the reduced rate, withdraw the missed amount and file Form 5329 reflecting the corrected distribution.¹⁰

The correction window matters most in the year a spouse dies. Between grief, estate paperwork, and unfamiliar accounts, the deceased spouse’s final-year RMD is easy to miss. Catching it inside the window cuts the penalty from 25% to 10% of the shortfall. Each account’s shortfall is assessed separately, so a missed distribution on both a traditional IRA and a 401(k) counts as two penalties, not one.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
2
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
3
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
4
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Exceptions to Tax on Early Distributions
5
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B (2025), Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
6
Internal Revenue Service. Required Minimum Distributions for IRA Beneficiaries
7
Internal Revenue Service. Seniors Can Reduce Their Tax Burden by Donating to Charity Through Their IRA
8
Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Amounts Relating to Retirement Plans and IRAs, as Adjusted for Changes in Cost-of-Living
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts
10
Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Form 5329 – Additional Taxes on Qualified Plans (Including IRAs)