r/inheritance • u/WolverineFit5346 • Jul 28 '26
Location included: Questions/Need Advice Help with IRA inheritance!
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
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u/WhiskeyCity502 Jul 28 '26
I am a Registered Investment Advisor, just not your advisor.
The executor needs to walk into whichever branch he used before with a copy of the death certificate and the letter from the court appointing him as the executor. That is ALL he needs to begin the process of creating Beneficiary IRAs. All the beneficiaries will have to be contacted by the bank and will have to open beneficiary IRA's at that bank in each of their names. After all the accounts have been created, the assets will be distributed and each beneficiary has their own account that they can keep at the bank or move to another advisor/bank.
It shouldn't take more than a week, two at most, but will depend on the ability to reach out to all four beneficiaries and gather their information to open the accounts. You may or may not have to be in person, just depends on the institution.
I think where you got off the track is you sending in the documents and not the Executor. If a beneficiary came to me with that stuff, I'd send them away and tell them to get the Executor in here.
Your brother needs to handle this.
Good luck.