The default advice — roll it into your own IRA — is right for most surviving spouses, but not automatically. A spousal rollover makes the account yours in every respect: your RMD age, the favorable Uniform Lifetime Table, full Roth-conversion flexibility. The trap is age. Once the money is your own IRA, withdrawals before 59½ generally pay the 10% penalty. A 56-year-old widow who rolls over her husband's $1.2M IRA and then needs $60,000 for living expenses pays a penalty that staying a beneficiary would have avoided entirely, since inherited-IRA distributions are penalty-free at any age. The clean play for a younger survivor is often to remain a beneficiary until 59½, then roll over.

Staying a beneficiary has a second advantage when the deceased spouse was younger: required distributions don't begin until the year the decedent would have reached RMD age. And since SECURE 2.0, a surviving spouse can also elect to be treated as the deceased spouse for RMD purposes, keeping the later start date while using the Uniform Lifetime Table. These options exist only for spouses — adult children get the ten-year rule with none of this flexibility — which is why the IRA should almost always name the spouse directly, not a trust, unless there is a specific reason.

The larger financial event is the one nobody plans for: the survivor's tax brackets collapse. You file jointly in the year of death, then single. Same house, similar spending, one Social Security check instead of two — but the 22% bracket now ends around half the income it used to. RMDs that were comfortable on a joint return push a single filer into higher brackets and across IRMAA surcharge thresholds for Medicare premiums. This is the widow's tax, and it is the strongest argument for doing Roth conversions while both spouses are alive and filing jointly.

Two Arizona notes. First, Arizona's community property rules govern what each spouse owns, but retirement accounts pass by beneficiary designation, not by will or community-property agreement — the form on file at the custodian controls, so audit it after every life event. Second, there is no Arizona estate or inheritance tax on any of this, and the survivor's ongoing IRA withdrawals are taxed at the state's flat 2.5% — the planning problem is federal, and it is about filing status and timing.

If you are the younger spouse or under 59½, do not let a custodian default you into a rollover. Compare all three paths — rollover, inherited spousal IRA, and the SECURE 2.0 election — against your age, cash needs, and the decedent's RMD clock before moving anything. The choice is largely irreversible once made.

Plan for the survivor's brackets while you are both alive. The years you file jointly are the cheapest years either of you will ever have for Roth conversions. Every traditional dollar converted at joint rates is a dollar the survivor will not have to withdraw at single rates with IRMAA stacked on top.

Treat the first year after a death as a planning year, not just a grieving year. The final joint return is often the last chance at wide brackets — a deliberate conversion or gain-harvesting decision in that window can be worth more than several years of ordinary optimization afterward.

• Rolling the IRA into your own account before 59½ and paying 10% penalties on withdrawals an inherited spousal IRA would have allowed penalty-free.
• Missing the final joint-return window — the year of death is the last year of married-filing-jointly brackets, and it is frequently wasted.
• Ignoring the widow's tax until it arrives: single brackets plus one Social Security check plus unchanged RMDs is a built-in tax increase that conversions while married could have defused.
• Assuming a will or Arizona community-property status controls the IRA. The beneficiary designation on file wins, including an outdated one.
• Leaving an ex-spouse or a deceased person as beneficiary because the form was never updated after divorce, remarriage, or a death in the family.