James, I didn't mean to imply that you'd see life insurance in the contingent plans. It's in the main suggestions report and you don't need contingent planning to do that. ESP calculates the level of live insurance needed to assure that the survivor enjoys standard of living that reflects the regular LSPA, at a minimum. Once one of you dies, there's no longer a need to have insurance for the benefit of the other.

Contingent reports provide value only if you set the age of death to something earlier than the age in the main plan. E.g., in our plan we both live to 100. For contingent testing you set those ages earlier, such as both of you at age 75. Your spouse/partner's contingent report reflects their life if you die when they're 75. Your report reflects your life if your partner dies when you're 75.

I just ran my survivor reports as a reminder while writing this answer. Because we have little in the way of taxable ("regular") investments, there are years where the regular withdrawal plan doesn't match the survivor's income needs. Both require adjustments to contingent retirement account special withdrawals to smooth out cash flow through our respective lives. Once I did that to level out income, one of us is likely to have a somewhat better standard of living but both would be at least as good as if both of us survived.

If you enable contingent reports, ESP copies aspects of the standard plan to the each survivor's contingent plan, for the topics you check. After you do that you're presented with a copy of things like retirement contributions, special withdrawals, expenses, receipts, etc. You can edit those to reflect what the survivor would do differently if their partner dies.

To see the effects at different potential ages of death, you have to change the ages each time you run a report. Alternatively, you can keep the ages static while making changes in the contingent subjects (e.g., contributions, withdrawals, etc.) to view the effect of those changes on the survivor. It's very much an iterative process but the information helps you determine if the survivor would be okay.

James, the higher standard of living in the survivor report reflects the fact that the survivor has all of the assets to themselves. If other income streams are involved, e.g., SS, annuities or pensions, those income streams stop or change and the survivor's income will change. That's why ESP recommends life insurance, to mitigate those effects.

If one of you is getting a lot of pension income that changes when you die, check out the living standard of the survivor. You may see that it is lower than if the other was the survivor but it should never be lower than the LSPA where both are alive, if no other changes are made.