Now is a good time to check all your accounts and make sure your beneficiaries and successor (backup) beneficaries are accurate and up-to-date. 

With so many banks changing hands and merging, you wouldn’t want your paperwork to be destroyed or lost. 

Make sure ex-spouses are no longer your beneficiaries and that children who have come of age are properly designated as beneficiaries if that is your wish.

If you inherited an IRA, you’ll need to set up your own beneficiary.

If benefits are payable to the owner’s estate or to a charity, there is no “beneficiary“-anyone receiving these benefits must take them in full no later than the end of the fifth year following the year of death if the owner died before the required beginning date or over the owner’s remaining life expectancy-which ignores the fact that he’s dead-if he died after the required beginning date. 

Please check with your tax preparer or estate attorney as your situation may be different than described.