my term policy when the kids were little, and when we looked into what it would cost to hire people to do what I was doing for them, it was going to be a huge expense (some special circumstances were involved), so we got enough to cover doing that for about 10 years.

I've been told that each spouse should have 8x the annual household income, plus $ to cover special needs, if you want to be financially comfortable immediately after the death of a spouse.