Welded joint often contains soft or softened regions such as the HAZ of TMCP steel welded with high heat input. In this study, the equivalent yield strength of plate structure containing softened region was predicted by FEM analysis, and its incremental behavior was explained with the results of the analysis. The calculated results of yield strength indicated the following for the plate structures. 1) As the softened region starts to yield, shear stress begins to build up along the boundary between base metal and softened region. This results in multi-axial stress condition which gives restraint on the softened region. 2) Restraint effect has a significant influence on the distribution of the shear stress, the nominal stress, and the strain. 3) The yielding behavior of softened region becomes the same as that of base metal when both ratios of length to width and thickness to width of softened region are larger than 30 and 13 respectively.