Updated September 5, 2026. Quick answer: Washington has no true elective share against a will. What exists instead is a narrower statutory award under RCW 11.04.015, pulled only from property that would otherwise be exempt from creditors, and it is not a percentage of the estate.
What Washington actually sets out
| What the statute sets out | What it says |
|---|---|
| RCW 11.54.020(1)(a) (basic award) | “The value, as of the date of the decedent’s death, of the decedent’s property, or if the decedent is married or has a registered domestic partner, the value of the community property” |
| What protects the surviving spouse instead | no true elective share against a will exists; a surviving spouse may instead petition under RCW 11.54 for a minimum ‘award’ tied to the homestead-exemption base amount (at least $125,000, inflation-adjusted), payable from the decedent’s exempt separate and/or community property regardless of will terms |
| Regime type | no true elective share; a narrower statutory award instead |
| Can it be waived | no dedicated elective-share waiver statute exists; community-property character can be altered by a valid community property agreement or prenuptial/postnuptial agreement |
| Time limit to file | not established in the sections reviewed this session (RCW 11.54.015, the recodified former Sec. .030, was not retrievable) |
How it works in practice
- The actual protection here is a narrower statutory award pulled only from property that would otherwise be exempt from creditors; it is not a percentage of the estate and does not work the way a common-law elective share does.
- Not applicable here: there is no elective share to plan around in the first place.
- Waiver: No dedicated elective-share waiver statute exists; community-property character can be altered by a valid community property agreement or prenuptial/postnuptial agreement.
- The election has to be affirmatively filed on a deadline: not established in the sections reviewed this session (RCW 11.54.015, the recodified former Sec. .030, was not retrievable).
The national picture, including the Uniform Probate Code sliding-scale schedule that a minority of states actually use, is on the elective share calculator page; this page is the record for Washington specifically, and its own numbers above should be used instead of the calculator’s national default for a Washington estate. The one thing that reliably defeats an elective share in every state that has one is explained on whether a prenup can waive the elective share. A newly widowed reader working through the fuller list of irreversible decisions, of which this is one, can start from the surviving spouse checklist.
What this page does not settle
- This session confirmed the core figure above against a primary or verbatim-mirror source, with one open point: Could not confirm any current filing deadline for the RCW 11.54 award, nor whether it overrides an express disinheritance clause.
- A state can amend or repeal this section without the page around it changing, and a detail specific to a reader’s own situation, such as a pending divorce, a premarital agreement, or property held jointly with right of survivorship, can change which part of the statute actually applies.
- Whether a revocable trust changes the outcome in Washington is explained above; that answer is specific to this state and does not generalize to any other one.
- Every quotation here was read against the source on September 5, 2026. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and the exact dollar or percentage amount a court awards depends on facts this page cannot know.
Whether this statute reaches a given family’s actual facts is decided by a court, not by this page. Nothing here is legal advice, and no one should sign a waiver or forgo an election on the strength of a web page.
Sources
The sources above were retrieved and read against the state text on September 5, 2026. Every quotation on this page was checked against those bytes.