Eligible Designated Beneficiary (EDB) Rules

The five EDB categories

The SECURE Act carved out five types of beneficiary who keep life-expectancy stretch treatment even though the general 10-year rule replaced the old stretch IRA for everyone else: a surviving spouse; a minor child of the IRA owner (not a grandchild or other minor); a beneficiary who is disabled under the IRS definition; a beneficiary who is chronically ill; and a beneficiary who is not more than 10 years younger than the owner (commonly a sibling close in age).

Disabled and chronically ill status must generally be established as of the date of death, using the same statutory definitions used elsewhere in the tax code. A beneficiary who does not meet one of these five tests is a "non-eligible designated beneficiary" and is subject to the ordinary 10-year rule instead.

How the EDB stretch is calculated

For a spouse, a disabled beneficiary, a chronically ill beneficiary, or a not-more-than-10-years-younger beneficiary, the initial life-expectancy factor comes from the IRS Single Life Table for the beneficiary’s age in the year after death, then reduces by exactly 1 in each following year until the account is exhausted. That is the divisor when the owner died before the required beginning date. If the owner died on or after it, the Treasury regulation makes the divisor the greater of the beneficiary's remaining life expectancy and the owner's remaining life expectancy.

A minor child follows a different clock: they use the same Single Life Table stretch only until they reach age 21, at which point the 10-year rule begins — so the account must be fully distributed by the end of the tenth year after the child turns 21. See the dedicated minor-child guide for that timeline in detail.

Frequently asked questions