Most couples plan their finances together, but very few plan for what happens when one spouse

passes away. And the result? Well, it's a surprise tax bill that can crush the surviving

spouse if you don't take steps to proactively alleviate this on the front end. So today I'm going to

show you three things you can do right now to take steps to protect your loved one long after

you have passed. Practically speaking, what we're talking about today is the widow's tax. Instead of telling you what the widow's tax is, let me show you a quick example to show you how devastating it can potentially be to a surviving spouse. Here you can see on my screen is tax brackets for the 2025 tax year, but before we dive into these, let's assume that you're married and let's assume that you and your spouse have $10,000 per month of income. So $120,000 per year. If you're

under 65, meaning if you don't have an increased standard deduction, your standard deduction for

married finally jointly is 30,000 per year, and for single is 15,000 per year. So let's see how things would change if one of you were to unexpectedly pass away. So let's start with 120,000. If you have 120,000 of income, you can take a $30,000 standard deduction if both of you are still living. So of that 120,000, your taxable income is now down to $90,000. If we compare that to these tax brackets here,

you see that the first $23,850 of that $90,000 of taxable income is subject to a 10% tax rate,

and the remainder is subject to a 12% federal income tax bracket. So you're in the 12% marginal

tax bracket. So keep that in mind. Now let's look at what would

happen if one of you were to pass away and if you were to maintain that same level of income.

So 10,000 per month, 120,000 per year. If you're single, you don't get to deduct 30,000 any longer.

You can only deduct 15,000 as your standard deduction. So now your taxable income is $105,000.

So not just as your taxable income higher, but the tax brackets that you're comparing that to

or that you're filling up have lower thresholds before you jump into higher brackets. Let's take a look

at that here. You can see that the first $11, 925 is subject to 10%. So you blow right through

that. Then the next amounts, up to 48,000, 475% right, 12%. You've blown through that because keep in mind,

we need to get to a full 105,000 here. You go all the way through the 22% tax bracket and you're

into the 24% marginal tax bracket with the same exact

income that you previously had when you were married. Now, the reality is typically when one spouse

passes away, you're not spending the exact same amount, but I wanted to illustrate this to you.

So you can see what the challenge is, is the marginal tax bracket in this example jumps from 12%

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