What If My Spouse Dies First?

It’s the hardest scenario to think about — and one of the most important to plan for. When one spouse dies, the survivor’s finances change in ways that catch many couples off guard: income drops, taxes often rise, and Social Security gets reconfigured. RetireRange lets you model it so the survivor isn’t left exposed.

New here? Build a baseline plan first with Getting Started. Background: Surviving spouse & mortality.

The quick version

1. Turn on mortality for one spouse at a chosen age.
2. Save it as a named strategy — "Alex dies at 80."
3. Run Comparison against your both-alive baseline — and look closely at whether the survivor’s plan still holds.

Step by step

1. Build the survivor version. On the Household tab, set that person’s mortality mode to Deterministic and choose an age. Deterministic (a fixed age every run) is best for a clean what-if; switch to Stochastic later if you want the full range across many possible death ages.

2. Save it as a named strategy (the Strategies button) — "Alex dies at 80."

3. Run Comparison on the Compare tab; with Compare against baseline on (the default), your both-alive baseline is drawn automatically beside the survivor version. Load Baseline (⤺) returns you to your plan.

What happens at the death event (and what to watch)

When a spouse dies, RetireRange automatically:

• Switches filing status to Single — narrower brackets, so the survivor often pays more tax on the same income. Watch the tax summary jump.
• Reconfigures Social Security — the survivor keeps the larger of the two benefits; the smaller one stops. Watch the income chart step down.
• Transfers accounts to the survivor and recalculates RMDs on their age.

So the key things to check:

• Does the survivor’s success rate still hold? This is the whole question. A plan that’s comfortable for two can be tight for one.
• The income drop — one Social Security check goes away while expenses don’t fall proportionally.
• The tax bump from Single filing.

The decision this should inform

This scenario is the clearest argument for how the higher earner claims Social Security. Because the survivor keeps the larger benefit, having the higher earner delay (toward 70) locks in a bigger check that protects the survivor for the rest of their life. Test it: compare "higher earner claims at 62" vs. "at 70" with this death scenario turned on. See collecting Social Security early and the SS optimizer.

The reverse: is my spouse okay if I die first?

Run the very same steps with mortality turned on for you instead of your spouse — it’s the mirror image, and often the more important direction to check. If you’re the higher earner, your death is the bigger financial shock to the survivor: they keep your larger Social Security benefit and lose their own smaller one, and the income that remains may be taxed at the narrower Single brackets. Model both directions — the plan needs to hold whichever spouse goes first.

Getting the most out of the analysis

• Start with Deterministic for a clean what-if. A fixed death age each run gives one crisp answer — and when you’re comparing two strategies, it holds the death timing identical so the strategy is the only variable.
• Switch to Stochastic for the realistic odds. Rather than assume a single death age, Stochastic draws one from the SSA life table on every run, so the survivor’s success rate reflects the full range of when death might happen instead of one guess. Reach for it once you’ve done the clean Deterministic pass and want the probability-weighted picture. See Surviving spouse & mortality.
• The survivor benefit uses the real SSA age-graded factor — 71.5% at age 60 up to 100% at full retirement age — and the survivor keeps the larger of the two benefits.