Just happened with my mom passing last year. It’s my understanding you don’t really have a choice… it will come to you as an Inherited IRA (or you need to establish an Inherited IRA into which the funds will be transferred). First, you need to see if the RMD was taken out for the year the person died. My mom had not done that before she passed so my sister and I had to each take it from our Inherited IRAs for that year. We plan to take the RMD from the Inherited IRA for the next few years until my wife and I are not bringing in full time salaries. We have them withhold an appropriate amount of Fed and State taxes from the RMD. Then, we can take larger distributions the last few years (before the 10-year limit is up) and not incur a big tax hit.