To claim retirement assets after an Invesco IRA account holder dies, file the Invesco IRA Beneficiary Transfer/Distribution Form. You can download it from Invesco’s forms library at invesco.com or request a paper copy from Invesco’s shareholder services line.1Invesco. Invesco Forms and Literature The form handles two paths: moving the assets into a new inherited IRA in your name, or taking a full or partial cash distribution. Which one fits depends on your relationship to the deceased, when they died, and how you want to absorb the tax consequences.
What to Gather Before You Start
Have everything in front of you before you fill in a single field. The form asks for the deceased account holder’s full legal name, Social Security number, Invesco account number, and date of death. Those details need to match Invesco’s records exactly, so copy them from an account statement rather than from memory. You’ll also enter your own Social Security number (or tax identification number if you’re an entity), current mailing address, date of birth, and phone number.
Alongside the form, Invesco requires a certified copy of the death certificate. Executors and personal representatives acting on behalf of an estate need court-issued Letters Testamentary or Letters of Administration proving legal authority over the account. Trustees claiming on behalf of a trust should have the trust document, or the relevant pages, ready to submit. Missing paperwork is the most common reason claims stall for weeks.
Choosing How to Take the Money
This is the most consequential decision on the form. Correcting it after the fact can be difficult or impossible, because the choice controls how Invesco reports the transaction to the IRS. Your options depend largely on whether you’re a spouse or a non-spouse beneficiary.
Spouse Beneficiaries
Surviving spouses have the most flexibility. You can roll the inherited assets into your own existing IRA, which makes the money yours under normal IRA rules, including the standard required minimum distribution schedule once you reach age 73.2Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Required Minimum Distributions You can instead keep the account as an inherited IRA and take distributions based on your own life expectancy, which is useful if you’re younger than 59½ and want to avoid the 10% early withdrawal penalty that would apply after a rollover.3Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary A lump sum is also available, though it triggers income tax on the full amount in one year.
Non-Spouse Beneficiaries
If the original owner died after 2019, most non-spouse beneficiaries fall under the SECURE Act’s ten-year rule. The inherited account has to be emptied by December 31 of the tenth year after the year of death.3Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary You can pace withdrawals however you like during those years, with one important wrinkle. If the original owner had already started taking required minimum distributions before death (because they had reached age 73), you’re expected to continue annual distributions during years one through nine, with the remainder due by the end of year ten.4Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2024-35 – Certain Required Minimum Distributions Final regulations apply for calendar years beginning on or after January 1, 2025, so the rule is now in effect.
A narrow group of non-spouse beneficiaries qualify as “eligible designated beneficiaries” and can still stretch distributions over their own life expectancy instead of collapsing them into ten years:
- Minor children of the deceased, who can stretch until they reach the age of majority, at which point the ten-year clock starts.
- Disabled or chronically ill individuals, as defined by the IRS.
- Anyone not more than ten years younger than the deceased account holder.
Lump Sums and Roth Accounts
Any beneficiary can take a lump sum. The entire balance goes into your gross income for that tax year, except for Roth contributions.3Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary On a large account, that can push you into a much higher bracket. Spreading withdrawals across years keeps more of the money growing tax-deferred and smooths out the tax hit.
For an inherited Roth IRA, the timeline rules work the same way (ten-year rule, eligible designated beneficiary exceptions, spousal rollover). The tax treatment differs. Withdrawals of the original owner’s contributions come out tax-free. Earnings are tax-free as long as the Roth account was open for at least five years before the withdrawal; if the account is younger than that, the earnings portion may be taxable.3Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
Filling In the Sections
The form is organized into numbered sections. The first captures the deceased account holder’s name, account number, Social Security number, and date of death. Copy these directly from Invesco account statements or correspondence.
The beneficiary information section is where you enter your own legal name, Social Security or tax ID number, date of birth, mailing address, and contact information. If multiple beneficiaries are splitting the account, each person files a separate form for their share.
The election section is where you indicate whether you want to transfer assets into an inherited IRA, roll over to your own IRA (spouses only), or take a distribution. Check the box carefully. Distributions to a beneficiary are reported under code 4 on Form 1099-R, which indicates a death distribution.5Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498 Changing the election after the money moves can create a tax problem that’s hard to unwind.
Tax Withholding Elections
An IRA distribution is a nonperiodic payment, and federal law sets the default withholding rate at 10% of the distribution.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 3405 – Special Rules for Pensions, Annuities, and Certain Other Deferred Income Leave the withholding section blank and Invesco sends 10% to the IRS and pays you the rest.
You can change that. Using IRS Form W-4R, which Invesco’s form incorporates or references, you can elect any rate from 0% to 100%. If the account is large enough to push you into a high bracket, withholding above 10% can prevent a surprise bill at filing time. If you have other withholding covering the liability, electing 0% keeps the full amount in your hands. One exception: if the payment is being delivered outside the United States, you can’t elect zero withholding.7Internal Revenue Service. Pensions and Annuity Withholding
State income tax withholding may also apply depending on where you live. The form has a section for state elections, and some states impose mandatory minimum withholding on retirement distributions. Check your state’s rules before completing this portion.
Signing and Mailing
Sign and date the form. Invesco may require a Medallion Signature Guarantee for higher-value transactions. To get one, visit a bank, credit union, or brokerage firm that participates in a Medallion program and have them stamp the form.8Investor.gov. Medallion Signature Guarantees – Preventing the Unauthorized Transfer of Securities Not every branch offers this service, so call ahead. The dollar threshold that triggers the guarantee is spelled out in the form’s instructions; read them before mailing so the package doesn’t come back.
Mail the completed form, certified death certificate, and any supporting legal documents (Letters Testamentary, trust pages) to the address printed on the current instruction page. Invesco updates its mailing addresses periodically, so use the address on the version of the form you just downloaded rather than one from an older document. Keep copies of everything you send.
After You Submit
Invesco reviews the paperwork to confirm the death certificate, beneficiary designation, and election are consistent and complete. If something is missing or unclear, they’ll contact you, and this is where most delays happen. Incomplete death certificates, mismatched names, and unsigned forms are the usual causes.
Once the file is in order, Invesco either opens a new inherited IRA in your name or processes the distribution. Cash distributions arrive by check or electronic transfer depending on what you selected. You’ll receive a Form 1099-R by January 31 of the year following any distribution, showing the gross amount, taxable amount, and any federal tax withheld.9Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498 Keep it for your tax return. If you transferred assets into an inherited IRA without taking a distribution, no 1099-R is issued for that year.
Once the inherited IRA is established, name your own successor beneficiary using Invesco’s Beneficiary Designation Form, available from the same forms library.1Invesco. Invesco Forms and Literature If you die before the inherited account is fully distributed, the remaining assets pass according to whatever designation is on file, or to your estate if none exists, which can accelerate the distribution requirements.
If You’re a Trustee Filing on Behalf of a Trust
When a trust is named as the IRA beneficiary, the process gets more complicated. A “see-through” trust lets the IRS look past the trust and apply distribution rules based on the individual beneficiaries of the trust. To qualify, the trust must be valid under state law, be irrevocable (or become irrevocable at the account holder’s death), have identifiable underlying beneficiaries, and provide a copy of the trust document to Invesco by October 31 of the year following the account holder’s death.
A trust that misses any of those requirements is treated as a non-designated beneficiary. That typically means a five-year distribution window if the original owner died before their required beginning date, or distributions based on the deceased owner’s remaining life expectancy if they died after it.10Vanguard. Inherited IRAs – RMD Rules for IRA Beneficiaries Either outcome is less favorable than what an individual designated beneficiary would receive. If you’re the trustee, work with a tax professional before filing the form. Picking the wrong election can lock in a bad outcome.
Missed Required Minimum Distributions
If the inherited IRA requires annual distributions and you miss one, the IRS imposes a 25% excise tax on the shortfall, meaning the difference between what you were supposed to withdraw and what you actually took. The penalty drops to 10% if you correct the shortfall within the correction window, which generally runs until the earlier of two years after the tax year the penalty applies or the date the IRS assesses the tax.11Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329
To fix a missed RMD, withdraw the required amount as soon as you catch the mistake, then file IRS Form 5329 with your tax return. If the miss was due to a reasonable error, you can request a waiver by attaching a written explanation to Form 5329. The IRS reviews these case by case and will notify you if the waiver is denied.11Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329