MarketWatch
Taxes in retirement: What happens after your husband or wife dies
One of the most common retirement tax planning errors I see is specific to married couples: not accounting for the tax changes that will occur once one of the two spouses dies. For example, using data from the SSA’s 2017 Period Life Table, we can calculate that, for a male/female couple both currently age 60 and in average health, there will be, on average, 11.3 years during which only one spouse is still alive. When one of the two spouses dies, there is generally a decrease in income, but it’s typically somewhat modest as a percentage of the household’s overall income — especially for retired couples who have managed to accumulate significant assets.
