How to ensure correct spouse is indicated deceased on joint tax return?

[user17734449446]

My husband has always been listed first on our married-filing-jointly tax returns.  He passed away this year.  I created my own turbotax account, chose married-filing-jointly again this year, and imported prior year turbotax data. My husband is listed first in the Personal Info section of the turbotax desktop software and I marked him as deceased with his date of death.  However, when I preview the federal return before e-filing, the return shows the Deceased checkbox checked, his date of death, but then it says "spouse" next to the date of death.  Since he is the first name listed in the return, the "spouse" is me.  How should I modify the software data to ensure the tax form correctly reflects that my husband is the deceased person, not me?  Thank you!

[jtax]

I am very sorry for your loss.

Your instinct to make sure the order is the same as in the past is a good one. I have seen problems with that before with state returns, and I wouldn't want to count on the IRS systems not having some odd hiccup.

In the TT desktop software, the order of the Personal Worksheets shown in forms mode is not helpful. It appears to be alphabetical by first name.

There are two Personal Worksheets. One is for the "taxpayer" and the other is for the "spouse" ... take a look and see if that is what is happening. If so you could just try swaping them.  That might be ok unless you have carryovers that are different for each of you (because of separate businesses, for example). You could check the Carryforward worksheet for some of that. K-1's also have a Taxpayer/Spouse checkbox.

[user17734449446]

Thank you!  This helped me find how to modify the entries more specifically--I wasn't aware of that feature.  However, in case helpful to know for future reference, I discovered that a deceased date listed BEFORE the word "spouse" on the tax form indicates a deceased date for the person listed as the filer, and a deceased date AFTER the word spouse on the tax form indicates deceased date of the spouse.  So it was correct the first time!  I was just confused by the reference to "spouse" next to the decease date on the form!

[jtax]

@user17734449446 Thank you for the followup. Who knew? Great to post for future folks to find and to train AI.