In this guide
- The rule: conversions belong to owners
- The answer by beneficiary type
- Surviving spouses: the one true yes
- The non-spouse workaround and its limits
- The exception: inherited 401(k) to inherited Roth IRA
- Trusts and estates as beneficiaries
- The distribution rules still apply
- Taxes and bracket management
- Mistakes that cost money
The rule: conversions belong to owners
A Roth conversion moves money from a traditional IRA you own into a Roth IRA you own, and you pay ordinary income tax on the pre-tax portion. The key word is own. When you inherit an IRA from anyone other than your spouse, IRS Publication 590-A is explicit: you can't treat the inherited IRA as your own. That means you can't make contributions to it, and you can't roll amounts into or out of it. An inherited IRA is a holding account for the beneficiary's required withdrawals, titled in the decedent's name for your benefit, and it stays that way until it is emptied.
Because a conversion is a form of rollover into a Roth IRA, and because the inherited account can't be rolled anywhere except by a trustee-to-trustee transfer to another inherited IRA of the same type, there is no mechanism for a non-spouse beneficiary to convert it. This is not a matter of income limits or timing — the income limit on conversions was repealed years ago. It is a structural rule about who is allowed to move the money.
Two groups escape that structure: surviving spouses, who can become the owner, and beneficiaries of employer plans, who get a separate statutory rollover right. Everyone else is limited to the distribution-then-contribution workaround described below.
The answer by beneficiary type
| Beneficiary | Can convert directly? | Workaround available? | Tax treatment | Distribution rule that still applies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Surviving spouse (sole beneficiary) | Yes — after electing to treat the IRA as their own or rolling it into their own IRA | Not needed | Ordinary income on the pre-tax amount converted, in the year of conversion | Their own RMD rules as owner; any RMD due that year must be taken before converting |
| Non-spouse individual (child, sibling, friend) | No | Partial: taxable distribution, then a regular Roth contribution capped by the annual limit, earned income and Roth income limits | Ordinary income on the distribution; no 10% penalty on death distributions | 10-year rule for most; annual RMDs in years 1–9 if the owner died on or after their required beginning date; eligible designated beneficiaries may use life expectancy |
| Non-spouse individual, inherited 401(k)/403(b) | Effectively yes — direct rollover to an inherited Roth IRA | Not needed | Ordinary income on the pre-tax amount rolled over | The same beneficiary rules follow the money into the inherited Roth IRA |
| Trust or estate | No | Limited and indirect: distributions can pass to individual beneficiaries, who may then make their own Roth contributions if eligible | Taxed to the trust or estate, or to beneficiaries if distributed out; trust brackets are highly compressed | Estates and non-see-through trusts: 5-year rule or the decedent's remaining life expectancy; see-through trusts: depends on the underlying beneficiaries |
Distribution rules for each category are summarized in IRS Publication 590-B and on the IRS Retirement topics — Beneficiary page. Trust situations are fact-specific; the table is a starting point, not a determination.
Surviving spouses: the one true yes
A surviving spouse who is the sole beneficiary has an option no one else has: they can elect to treat the IRA as their own, or roll it into an IRA they already own (Pub. 590-B). From that moment it is simply their IRA, and they can convert any portion of it to a Roth IRA under the ordinary conversion rules in Publication 590-A. There is no income limit on conversions and no cap on the amount.
Three details are worth getting right before converting:
- RMDs first. Required minimum distributions cannot be converted. If an RMD is due for the year — including any the decedent had not yet taken in the year of death — it must come out as a taxable distribution before the conversion.
- Age matters for spouses under 59½. Money left in an inherited (beneficiary) IRA can be withdrawn without the 10% early-withdrawal penalty. Once a younger spouse treats the IRA as their own, that death exception is gone. A conversion itself isn't penalized, but converted amounts withdrawn within five years and before 59½ generally are. A spouse who may need the cash soon sometimes keeps part of the account as an inherited IRA and treats only the rest as their own.
- The bill arrives in one year. Converting a large inherited balance in the year of death, when the survivor may already have a full year of the couple's income and will file jointly, can be efficient — or it can push income into a bracket that later single-filer years would never reach. Our Roth conversion guide covers how to size a conversion to a target bracket.
The non-spouse workaround and its limits
A non-spouse beneficiary who wants Roth money has one indirect path: take a distribution from the inherited IRA, pay the tax, and separately contribute to a Roth IRA in their own name. This is often described online as a conversion. It is not. It is two unrelated transactions, and the second one is governed entirely by the regular Roth contribution rules:
- The annual limit. For 2026 the IRA contribution limit is $7,500, plus an inflation-indexed catch-up if you are 50 or older. That limit is shared across all your traditional and Roth IRAs.
- Earned income. Contributions can't exceed your taxable compensation for the year (Pub. 590-A). An inherited IRA distribution is not compensation. A retired beneficiary with no wages or self-employment income generally cannot contribute at all, unless a working spouse's compensation supports a spousal contribution on a joint return.
- The Roth income limits. For 2026 the ability to contribute phases out between $153,000 and $168,000 of modified AGI for single filers and between $242,000 and $252,000 for married couples filing jointly (IRS). The inherited IRA distribution itself raises your MAGI, so a large withdrawal can push you out of eligibility in the very year you intended to contribute.
Money is fungible, so the Roth contribution doesn't literally need to be the same dollars that came out of the inherited IRA. What the workaround really does is let the inheritance fund a contribution you were already entitled to make. For a working beneficiary under the income limits, that can be worth doing every year of the 10-year window. For anyone hoping to move a six-figure inherited IRA into a Roth, it moves $7,500 or so at a time — and nothing at all if you lack earned income.
Watch the excess. If you contribute more than you are eligible for, the excess is subject to a 6% excise tax for every year it stays in the Roth IRA (Pub. 590-A). Withdraw it, with its earnings, by your tax-filing deadline including extensions to avoid the tax.
The exception: inherited 401(k) to inherited Roth IRA
Employer plans follow a different rule. Publication 590-A states that a designated beneficiary, other than a surviving spouse, of a deceased employee can roll over all or part of an eligible rollover distribution from a qualified retirement plan into a Roth IRA, provided it moves by direct trustee-to-trustee transfer into an inherited Roth IRA. The IRS first laid this out in Notice 2008-30, following the Pension Protection Act's creation of non-spouse beneficiary rollovers.
In practice this means that if a parent dies with money in a 401(k), 403(b) or governmental 457(b), the child can often move it straight into an inherited Roth IRA, paying ordinary income tax on the pre-tax amount in the year of the rollover. It must be a direct transfer — a check payable to the beneficiary cannot be rolled over by a non-spouse. And the rollover must happen from the plan itself. Once the plan balance has been moved into an inherited traditional IRA, the Roth door closes, because the money is now subject to the inherited-IRA rule above.
Three cautions. First, confirm with the plan administrator that it will process a direct rollover to an inherited Roth IRA and ask how it reports the transaction. Second, the inherited Roth IRA is not your own Roth: it remains subject to beneficiary distribution rules, so the tax-free growth runs for a limited window rather than a lifetime. Third, whether later distributions are fully tax-free depends on the Roth five-year rules; confirm how your custodian and CPA treat the five-year period in your situation before relying on it.
Trusts and estates as beneficiaries
A trust or an estate cannot own a Roth IRA of its own, cannot treat an inherited IRA as its own, and cannot convert. Distributions from the inherited IRA are taxed either to the trust or estate or, if passed through, to the individual beneficiaries. Because trust income tax brackets reach the top rate at a very low level of income, retaining IRA distributions inside a trust is usually expensive. An individual beneficiary who receives a distribution from the trust can use it to fund their own eligible Roth contribution, subject to the same limits described above.
Whether a trust named as beneficiary of a 401(k) can use the plan-to-inherited-Roth rollover depends on how the trust is drafted and whether it qualifies as a see-through trust. That is a question for the trustee's counsel, not a do-it-yourself decision.
The distribution rules still apply
Nothing about any of these routes switches off the post-SECURE Act distribution regime. Most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty the account by the end of the tenth year after the year of death, and some must also take annual RMDs in the meantime. We cover the full schedule, the exceptions for eligible designated beneficiaries and the penalty relief history in our inherited IRA RMD rules guide, and the successor-beneficiary case in inheriting an inherited IRA. The point here is narrower: an inherited Roth IRA funded from a 401(k) is still an inherited account, and a spouse who converts has simply swapped one set of owner rules for another.
Taxes and bracket management
Because every route triggers ordinary income tax, the real planning question for a non-spouse beneficiary is not whether to convert — you can't — but how to spread the inherited IRA's taxable income across the years you have. Ten years of roughly even withdrawals will usually beat a lump sum in year ten, particularly if your income will rise, and the withdrawals can be timed to lower-income years such as a sabbatical, early retirement or the gap before Social Security.
The inherited IRA distributions also compete with conversions of your own traditional IRA for the same bracket room. A beneficiary who was planning to convert their own IRA may find the inherited withdrawals use up the space they had planned to fill. The calculator lets you model both income streams together, and the Roth conversion guide explains how to rank them.
Mistakes that cost money
- Asking the custodian to convert the inherited IRA. A request that is processed as a distribution and deposit into your own Roth IRA is a taxable distribution plus a contribution that may be an excess contribution.
- Moving a 401(k) to an inherited traditional IRA first. Once the money leaves the plan for an inherited IRA, the inherited Roth option is gone.
- Taking a 401(k) check personally. Non-spouse beneficiaries can only roll over by direct transfer. A check made out to you is a taxable distribution with no rollover available.
- A spouse converting before taking the year's RMD. RMDs can't be converted; the sequencing matters.
- Forgetting that the distribution counts toward MAGI. A large withdrawal can disqualify you from the Roth contribution it was supposed to fund, and can affect Medicare IRMAA two years later.