My Mother had an IRA and when she died the RMD was not finished.

No. The RMD should have been withdrawn in her name and taxes paid on her final return. This should have been done before any beneficiary accounts were set up.

The information you provided is ambiguous as I can not tell whose RMD you refer to (yours or your mom's) nor can I tell whether your mom had reached her RMD beginning date when she died. That said, here are the rules for both cases.

If your mom was required to take an RMD, then that distribution must be taken before any beneficiary can compute their own requirement. Failure to complete the RMD would make your mom subject to the excess accumulation penalty (50%) on her final income tax return. Assuming your mom was required to take her RMD, your RMD (assuming you do not want to withdraw the balance) will be based upon Table 1 in IRS Pub 590.... that's your life expectancy because it is longer than your mom's. If your mom was not subject to an RMD, then you also use Table 1. Note that the above is based on the assumption that your mom's IRA is divided into separate accounts (Inherited IRA) for each beneficiary. If not, then all the beneficiaries (assuming they are all individuals) use the Table 1 life expectancy factor of the oldest beneficiary.

Lots of missing information, so I'll make some assumptions. If any of them is wrong, please correct me and ignore the rest of this post.

1. Your mother died in 2012.
2. Your mother was at least 72 at the beginning of 2012.
3. Your mother did not take the complete amount of her 2012 RMD before her death.

The beneficiaries must complete her 2012 RMD, which is based on her age. It's income to them and goes on their 1040's. Perhaps the custodian can handle this before splitting her IRA into inherited IRAs for the beneficiaries.

A beneficiary's RMD's don't begin until the year after the owner's death.

Yes, for 2012, if it's not distributed to you from her IRA before the beneficiary IRA is established.

See "Distributions in the year of the owner?s death" and the following discussion of beneficiaries starting on page 33 of IRS Publication 590.

Phil Marti VITA/TCE Volunteer Clarksburg, MD

responding to

My mom was 84 and did die in 2012 and I am 62. But the problem is my mom's IRA was broken up. The $3,000 that I mentioned was the amount my mom needed to complete her RMD (I did use table 3 to calculate the amount). I was told by Alliance Bernstein that I could make a distribution and that would cover the missing amount , even though they knew that I had opened my inherited IRA account. I wasn't sure if this was correct as I had been given incorrect advice before. Is there a way to legally get around this problem?