You're absolutely right. My wife takes great umbrage at the fact that that in order to access my file, she has to go through me. It puts her in a position where she's accessing her future through her partner. In today's society, that almost puts the spouse in the position for which we used to use the phrase, “dependants, furniture, and effects”. They were sort of lumped together as second-class citizens or second-class subordinates to the members. In today's egalitarian system, that has to change.
With appropriate levels of privacy, there's no reason why my wife could not find ways of accessing the kinds of benefits that she would be expected to receive in the case of my death.