Receiving an Inheritance
It can feel like a responsibility before it feels like a gift. Both are true, and there is time to decide what it is for.
Receiving assets from someone who has died, most often a parent. The legal clock and the emotional one run at different speeds, and most of the irreversible choices fall on the legal one.
What changes
Some choices about an inheritance run on a legal clock. Three come first.
What runs on a clock
Most heirs other than a spouse have to empty an inherited IRA within ten years and, if the owner had begun required distributions, take some each year along the way. A qualified disclaimer, which passes an inheritance on as if it had never been yours, generally has to be made within nine months of the death and before any of it is accepted.
The new cost basis
Under §1014, most inherited assets take a new cost basis at their value on the date of death, so gains made before then are not taxed when you sell. Retirement accounts and annuities are the main exception: they take no new basis, and pre-tax balances are taxed as income when they are withdrawn. Both change what is worth keeping.
What it is for
An inheritance can secure the household, fund a purpose or pass to the next generation. Deciding which aims to make it yours, rather than something held on someone else’s behalf.
What it strains, what it draws on
An inheritance can strain a person’s sense of purpose and the feel of their days, and it adds security, skill and the freedom to choose.
Strains: the parts of a life this Transition tends to draw down. Draws on: the parts it can strengthen, and that help carry it. Both come from the Human Wealth ontology.
How the ontology maps TransitionsWho works on it
The work is shared across these Services, alongside the estate’s executor and your own attorney. Your counsel stays; we keep the plan in one piece.
Legacy Planning
Your own estate plan is reviewed with your attorney to include what you received.
Read moreInvestment Management
The inherited portfolio joins the plan, with the cost basis each holding now has.
Read moreTax Planning
Inherited assets are reviewed at their new cost basis before anything is sold.
Read moreFamily Governance
Heirs join the council as the assets pass to them.
Read more
Common questions
Start with a conversation.
You do not need a balance sheet or a date. Tell us what is changing, and we will tell you plainly whether we are the right office for it.