Like in all practice areas, we need to be mindful of various developments in legal and practical issues affecting our work. Some are sudden, like changes in the law through a court decision or statutory update. Others are more gradual, like the impact of technological advances as they are adopted in our office and in the courthouses, as well as by our clients. Whether at a glacial pace or not, we need to take stock of the changes and adjust our provision of legal services accordingly.

Most recently, there has been a new development related to a topic we covered last year, in our article published in The Legal on Oct. 28, 2022, (“Revisiting Estate Planning with IRAs and Qualified Retirement Benefits”), where we addressed the changed landscape for planning for inherited IRAs due to the impact of the Secure Act which went into effect back in December 2019. In that article we noted that there was continuing uncertainty regarding the implementation of the new 10-year payout rule (part of the required minimum distribution rules for IRAs and qualified retirement benefits) and that distributions would generally not be required until Dec. 31, 2023, at the earliest, for deaths occurring after Dec. 31, 2019. The IRS has recently further extended that earliest start date until Dec. 31, 2024, under Notice 2023-54.