My Spouse Left Me An IRA, What Are My Options?

Spouses are frequently beneficiaries to IRAs, this article describes what options are available, based on IRS regulations, to a spouse as the beneficiary of an IRA upon the death of their loved one. This article is not intended to exhaustively describe every possible scenario; rather, it describes the most common surviving spouse situations and seeks to put a surviving spouse on the right path in determining what to do with a traditional IRA.