How would I modify Profiles when a Spouse dies or Couple divorces

• In the case of a death, set up a new Profile for the surviving spouse only if they will be continuing a relationship with your organization.
• In the case of a divorce, set up a new Profile for each person (if you anticipate they both may stay active with your organization, otherwise, just add a Profile for the one who will stay active). 

The reason to create new profiles is that most Gift History reports will show the current name on the Profile. If you change it to just one party, the gift history is not accurately reflected. You might consider  grouping these Profiles together in order to run the Group Gift Report to see all gifts they gave when married or together.

Be sure to remove Affiliation codes for mailing lists from the inactive Profiles and copy them to the new Profiles. If you are in a version that has Soft Credits, this gives even more flexibility and you can modify the historic gifts to give soft credit to the surviving donor or to each of the new profiles in a divorce.  If individuals remarry, the soft credit feature will allow you to "drag" along the gift activity of their prior relationships.