Via CNBC
By David Robinson
New federal rules for individual retirement accounts greatly increase the tax burden for some heirs by telescoping the allowable period for withdrawals. Yet this pain can be greatly reduced by converting regular IRAs to Roth IRAs before bequeathing them.
Previously, all heirs had their entire life expectancy to take withdrawals from inherited IRAs, so they were able to stretch out these accounts, and the tax on withdrawals, over decades. Hence, the nickname for inherited accounts: stretch IRAs.