My favorite Windows Gugu, Raymond Chen, has posted a blog entry about the evolution of the inheritability of handles in Child Processes. This subject can be confusing, so I am supplying a link to the artcle:
Programmatically Controlling Which Handles are Inherited by New Processes in Win32, Dec, 2011 (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/12/16/10248328.aspx)