James,
Yes, you can use your wife’s retirement benefit as a work around for her Surviving Divorced Wife widow's benefit. Replace her past covered earnings with fictitious earnings that calculate her retirement benefit to equal her widow’s benefit.
You can do this by entering a fictitious earning for her at age 16 and growing it. For example, if you say that she earned $15,000 at age 16 and grow it by 0%, then her calculated retirement benefit is $16,904. Adjust the $15,000 up or down until her retirement benefit equals her widow’s benefit. This will also eliminate her excess spouse’s benefit off of your record.

James,
Please open a support ticket, upload your database, identify which profile this is about, and detail what you're seeing versus what you expect to see.

Thanks,
Mike