A wife has just notified us that her husband died 5 1/2 years ago. He has an IRA with us and she is the sole beneficiary. He died at age 47. She now wants to treat the IRA as her own. Can she still do this even with the death being so long ago?

I guess that I would say you would want to get that IRA out of the decedent's name as soon as you can. Since the wife is the sole beneficiary then she can treat as her own IRA and roll into hers if she has one. The best case scenario is to transfer the funds in the same year as death, but if the bank is not alerted to the death, there is not a lot we can do.

Sorry, I did not realize that I was not logged in on my answer.

The account holder was under age 70-1/2, so it falls under "before Required Beginning Date" rules.

The spouse is the sole beneficiary, so she's got 3 options:

1 - "5 year rule": withdraw the entire amount by December 31 of the year containing the fifth anniversary of the IRA holder's death.
2 - distributions over the spouse beneficiary's single life expectancy (recalculated) beginning by the later of: (a) December 31 of the year following the IRA holder's death, or (b) December 31 of the year the IRA holder would have turned 70-1/2.
3 - Treat the account as her own.

An election must be made for which option she wants to use. If no election is made, unless your account agreement says otherwise, the default is #2, single life expectancy payments (EGGTRA changed this - used to be the 5-year rule).

So... as long as she makes a written election to treat the IRA as her own before she reaches the date in #2, she should be able to assume ownership of the account.