What I find interesting is that you refer to the deceased as "client," but the widow only as "surviving spouse."  I hope in time you come to consider her a client also.  Maybe for your approval she needs to clean up her act by closing the IRA account.  I have already mentioned elsewhere that we tax income, not pieces of paper, so I won't say it again.  She got $5,000 income.  To avoid fraud, put it on her return.  It's not even a situation where document matching will generate a deficiency notice, because IRS has been informed of the death.  If there was tax withheld, IRS might ask about that in a year or so.  They don't match all the 1099 withholding reports until much later in the year.