Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

Re: RE: Marriage/financial matter

First I will address your answer in the context of divorce (you posted it under Family Law). The Social Security Act forbids division of social security benefits between divorced spouses. In Hisquierdo, a 1970 case involving allocation of railroad retirement benefits pursuant to a property division in divorce, the United States Supreme Court considered the anti-assignment clause of the Railroad Retirement Act. The Court held that the clause prevents the assignment of railroad retirement benefits to the ex-spouse of a benefit recipient. The Court's opinion analogized to the Social Security Act, indicating that the Social Security Act also forbids a division of social security benefits in order to pay a divorced spouse. The Hisquierdo Court also noted that the Social Security Act's prohibition against division has two narrow exceptions for payments made to satisfy alimony or child support obligations, further indicating that any other attempts to assign benefits to a non-beneficiary were forbidden. Courts have struggled with the inequities created by the statutory bar against dividing benefits, and they have attempted to find ways to resolve those inequities by "considering" the Social Security pension value when allocating other assets. The practice of "considering" social security benefits when dividing other marital property in Washington is controlled by In re the Marriage of Zahm, Wash 1999."a judge may consider a spouse's social security benefits as a factor coequal with others when determining an equitable division of any distributable marital assets" to equalize the parties' standards of living following the divorce).

You are unlikely to get significant spousal maintenance (Washington equiavalent of alimony) based on your short marriage. The other approach to this is probate: If you are thinking of survivor benefits you would be in a better position on Social Security (widow/widowers share). As to the other assets, the surviving spouse is guaranteed 1/2 of the probate estate (some assets are not part of the probate estate, e.g. life insurance is generally not part of the probate estate). As long as this answer is there is more detail that would be affected by the details of your situation. I hope my answer helps you on this.