What do I need to do first after my spouse passes away?

As early as age 60, or 50 if you are disabled, and at any age if you are caring for the deceased’s child under 16. Claiming at 60 permanently reduces the survivor benefit to roughly 71.5% of what your spouse was receiving or entitled to. Waiting until your own full retirement age gets you 100%. Unlike your own retirement benefit, the survivor benefit does not keep growing past full retirement age.

The useful part is that the survivor benefit and your own retirement benefit are separate, and you can switch between them. Some people take a reduced survivor benefit at 60 and leave their own record untouched until 70, then switch. Others do the reverse. Which order is better depends on the relative size of the two benefits, and it is worth running before you file anything, because some of this is difficult to undo.

It is the tax increase that comes from filing as single instead of married filing jointly, and for most people it starts with the tax year after the year a spouse passes away. The standard deduction roughly halves and the brackets compress, so the same income can land in a higher bracket. It often raises Medicare IRMAA surcharges two years later as well.

For the year of death you can generally still file jointly. If you have a dependent child you may qualify for qualifying surviving spouse status for two more years, which keeps the joint brackets, but most widows and widowers do not have that, so the change lands in year two. It is very plannable if you know it is coming, and most of the planning happens during the first year while joint rates still apply.

Usually not immediately, but the choices have real consequences and some of them are not reversible. A surviving spouse can generally treat an inherited IRA as their own, roll it into their own IRA, or keep it titled as an inherited IRA. Which is better depends mostly on your age, your spouse’s age, and whether you might need to withdraw before 59 and a half.

If you are under 59 and a half and may need the money, keeping it as an inherited IRA avoids the 10% early withdrawal penalty. If your spouse hadn’t started required withdrawals yet and you are older than your spouse was, staying a beneficiary can delay them. If you are younger, treating it as your own usually delays them. Nobody should move this money before that comparison is run.

Almost never in the first year, and rarely for financial reasons alone. There is one timing item worth knowing: if you sell within two years of your spouse’s death, you may still be able to claim the $500,000 joint capital gain exclusion rather than the $250,000 single amount, as long as you meet the IRS requirements.

That matters mainly if the home has gone up a lot in value, and not much otherwise. Washington is also a community property state, which generally means the whole property received a step-up in basis at death rather than half of it, so the taxable gain may be far smaller than you expect. Check the numbers before treating that two-year window as a reason to move.

Longer than people will tell you. Outside the handful of items with real deadlines, most decisions can usually wait six to twelve months. Selling investments, buying an annuity, gifting to children, and moving house are all easier to delay than to undo.

The pressure usually arrives from two directions: family who want to be helpful, and people who earn a commission when you decide. Neither of those is a deadline. The first thing I do is separate the short list that has an actual clock on it from the long list that does not, so you can stop carrying all of it at the same time.

Eventually, and it is mostly administrative. Jointly titled accounts generally pass to you automatically, but your spouse’s name still needs removing and your own beneficiary designations need updating, because those forms override your will. Accounts titled only in your spouse’s name follow their beneficiary designation, or go through probate if there was not one.

The step people skip is updating their own beneficiaries afterward. If your spouse was the primary beneficiary on everything you own and you never named a new one, the contingent beneficiary inherits, and that is frequently someone we named 20 years ago.