An IRA arrives with your name on it.
Not money you earned. Not money you planned around. An account someone else spent decades building, handed over through a form you may never have seen.
And attached to it is a clock, running from a date you did not choose, at a speed nobody has told you yet.
So almost everyone asks the same question first: do I have to take money out of this thing every year?
And the answer is the least satisfying word in the English language.
Sometimes.
Not yes. Not no. Sometimes. The gap between the yeses and the nos is worth tens of thousands of dollars, and which side you land on has almost nothing to do with you. It depends on a fact about the person who died.
Here is how to find out which one you are.