§ 984 [No Privilege in Spousal Adversarial Proceedings]

If you and your spouse end up on opposite sides of a lawsuit, you can't use spousal privilege to keep communications between you secret. This means if one spouse sues the other, either person can be required to share private conversations or information that would normally be protected.

The same rule applies after a spouse dies. If someone is making a legal claim against the surviving spouse based on the deceased spouse's will, inheritance rights, or a transaction made while they were alive, spousal privilege doesn't apply there either. In both situations, the law assumes that once spouses are legally fighting each other or their estate is being disputed, keeping those communications private no longer makes sense.