Sadly, I just had to do the following for my deceased daughter's joint return. In joint returns, the IRS uses the first tax payer as the lead identifier in the return. Social Security has notified IRS about his death and his Social Security number is flagged by IRS and your return will not be accepted as long s he is the first taxpayer in the tax return. Before changing anything go into the return and write down the pin numbers etc that are used to identify the taxpayers. Now you will need to go into the personal area of the tax return and write your info where your husbands was and then type his information where your info was. You will now be tax payer one and he will be tax payer two. TT ties all income info forms to taxpayer one or two. So, you will need to change every form to tie to the correct taxpayer as they will still be pointing to wrong person. This also applies to the pin numbers later in the return. Still use last year's AGI. After I did all of this my daughter's joint return was accepted immediately. BTW, the reject error msg is incorrect. It has nothing to do with the AGI but is caused by a deceased social security number.
