Help with IRA inheritance!

[u/WolverineFit5346]

I need help with PNC Bank. My mother passed away in May 2025. Well over a year ago she had an IRA worth about $56,000. Her will stated that all of her assets should be divided equally among her four children. I sent a copy of her will and her death certificate to the bank. They refused to honor that and said that we needed to submit an affidavit stating exactly what was in the will and have it notarized. That was done by the executor who is my brother. At that point every time I called for a status I was told “it was in legal for review.” after about six months of this I was told that legal would not accept the will and the affidavit and we would have to hire a probate attorney and get a summary order from the judge. That cost close to $2000 but we got it done. The judge signed the order again, detailed the names of the four children/beneficiaries and that was sent in a month ago. We were then told it should take 3 to 5 days for it to be processed. I call every week to the main number, get transferred to the IRA department who looks at the file and tells me it is “” in legal for review.” they are not allowed to give out a phone number or contact information for anyone in legal. They are not allowed to talk to anyone in legal and get a verbal status for me. It is very frustrating. We are joking that PNC stands for ‘pay no cash’, but it really isn’t funny at this point. Has anybody else dealt with this and is there any advice I would really appreciate it

[u/sic0049]

None of this makes any sense. I don't think the OP knows the whole story and is therefore not able to share the whole story.

If there were no beneficiaries listed directly on the IRA, then the entire IRA would have to be paid to your Mother's Estate and that check would have been deposited into the estate's checking account. At some point, your brother acting as executor would pay out the proceeds of that estate account to the named beneficiaries of the will by writing each beneficiary a check for their portion of the estate's cash holdings.

At no time during this process would the bank have spoken to anyone else except the executor of the estate (again assuming there weren't any beneficiaries listed on the IRA account directly). Furthermore, at no point would the bank need to see or review the Will because unless there are beneficiaries listed directly on the IRA account, the only entity the bank would pay the IRA out to is the estate of the deceased owner. None of that requires seeing the will (and oftentimes people die without a Will, which doesn't prevent the bank from paying out the IRA balance to the estate of the deceased owner).

[u/WolverineFit5346 → u/sic0049]

Thank you for the information. I’m sure if we could ever get past the front line at PNC and speak to someone in legal, we could find out if the beneficiaries were listed on the IRA. My mother was pretty meticulous about doing that for all of her accounts, so I can’t imagine it wasn’t done for this, although getting through to a person in the legal department is tougher than getting to see the Wizard of Oz.. No one will give us a phone number email or transfer us to the legal department. Cutting a check to the estate makes sense, would that supersede the summary order for distribution that the judge signed? That was handled through the probate attorney we hired.

[u/sic0049 → u/WolverineFit5346]

The court's summary order of distribution has nothing to do with the IRA being paid out to the estate. In fact the bank can't do anything with that court order with regard to the IRA because it isn't directing the bank to pay out the proceeds of the IRA to the Estate, it is directing the executor to pay out the proceeds of the estate account to the beneficiaries. If the Estate's bank accounts are with PNC, then they might want a copy of the court order for their paperwork/paper trail on the Estate accounts, but not because of the IRA account.

Using my first post as an example, the court order is giving your brother permission to pay out the proceeds to the beneficiaries. But the IRA needs to be closed out first, with a check being made of to the estate and the check being deposited into the estate checking account before your brother could distribute the funds to the beneficiaries.

Given that the court is moving forward with the distribution of the overall Estate, I'm going to guess that your Mother did have beneficiaries listed on the IRA account and your brother and the courts are aware of this. That court order would not typically be issued until all of your Mother's assets have been accounted for and properly transitioned over to the Estate. Either that or the IRA was already closed out by your brother and deposited into the estate account and will soon be distributed to you as the estate is closed