<prompt> Human: A few months ago my aunt passed away, leaving my mom her 250k IRA account. At the time of her death, my aunt was withdrawing 900 a month from this account.Now as the owner of this account, my mom was told by her financial advisor that shes required to take the same 900 monthly withdrawal as my aunt used to. Is this correct? It seems weird that she wouldnt be able to change it.  <response>: One key question to ask is whether the aunt inherited that Roth IRA from someone else. If so, then the RMD that she was using applies also to your mother and you do not change it. In that case your mother is the successor beneficiary and does not get to use her age to start a different RMD. But you would want to determine if 900mo really was aunts RMD.See IRS Publication 590-B, page 10.If aunt started this Roth IRA herself, then there would have been no RMD for her. She might have been taking 900mo but not as a requirement. In that case your mother does determine her own RMD, and it can be based on her age. In that case, your mother is the beneficiary.Lastly, if this is actually a traditional IRA not a Roth IRA, what I just said is not the case.---Quote relevant if AUNT was a beneficiary and MOTHER is a successor beneficiary:... if the designated beneficiary dies before his or her portion of the account is fully distributed, continue to use the designated beneficiarys remaining life expectancy to determine the distribution period; do not use the life expectancy of any subsequent beneficiary.That will not be the case if AUNT was the original owner of the Roth IRA.Its complicated!---The reason its really important to find out if aunt inherited this from someone else is because if your mother thus should be continuing the 900mo drawdown but instead your mother wrongly recalculates a new RMD based on her being much younger, the lower amount she would be taking would be incorrect and the IRS upon discovering this would penalize by 50 of the amount that didnt get taken but should have been! That is a huge penalty to face that could occur if your mother does not handle this correctly. 