Marriage question: Is she obligated to stay?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is a purely hypothetical situation based on a discussion I was having with a buddy of mine. The details are loosely based on my situation, but I am not considering leaving my husband, just in case he decides to read this. :smiley:

A husband and a wife have been together for a few years. They have kid(s) together. She’s worked and supported him before. However, for the last couple of years, while she had kids and went to school, he’s been the sole financial support in the family. Some pretty severe issues have popped up in the relationship that don’t appear to have been addressed with counseling. There’s distrust, suspicion, and both partners just generally don’t feel loved and supported any longer.

So lets say that the wife has made up her mind to leave. Lets also assume for arguments sake that her family is unable to help her get back on her feet for whatever reason. If she left immediately, she would have to drop out of school, which she’s very close to finishing. She would no longer have a vehicle. She would have little means of financial support.

My friend thinks that it would be a “bitch move” to stay until she had some money saved and some work lined up, then leave. He says that if she’s being supported by him, then it’s immoral to book out when you no longer need the financial support, assuming the relationship is already dead and gone. It’s “using” the other partner, since he presumably wants to save the relationship. He doesn’t see why the other partner should have to support someone who’s no longer interested in a relationship with him.

I disagree slightly. I think that when the Mr. and Mrs. Hypothetical chose to bring a child into the world, they agreed to intertwine their destinies regardless of how they would feel about each other in the future. Mr. Hypothetical isn’t being used, he’s simply investing in the secure economic future of his child, which is in both their best interests, regardless of the status of the relationship. To me, you should expect in a marriage (both partners, regardless of gender) that you are going to have to occasionally support the other partner, and that support does not obligate one to stay in a failing relationship. It just doesn’t make sense to me to say “Ok, he supported you, now you’re obligated to stay.” Really? For the rest of her life? And if not the rest of her life, then how much time does she need to stay until it’s “ok”? To my mind, now that they have kid(s), it would actually be borderline irresponsible to leave a non-dangerous situation without adequate financial support for your child(ren).

So what do you guys think? Does a financially supported partner have an obligation to stick with a relationship? If it’s ok for Mrs. Hypothetical to leave at some point, does the timing of the relationship’s end have any bearing on your answer? Is there something both my friend and I are missing? I’m going to add a poll to this in a minute, but feel free to explain your answer.

EDIT: Well, I was going to add a poll, but now I’m stupid and can’t figure out how. Just explain your answer. :slight_smile:

2

I think that this is the key. He can either let her finish school now and use her education to locate a job, or he can pitch her out and pay for her to go to school all over again later.

I’ve seen divorce cases where the wife, who formerly worked before marriage, suddenly found that she had no way to support herself after the breakup and the husband was ordered to pay her tuition so that she could get a career and be self-supporting.

I guess the other choice would be him paying alimony or spousal support instead, but courtsin this jurisdiction have long held that if she quit her job to stay home and raise the kids, she has the right to a career if the relationship breaks down.

Coming out of this is the fact that some courts have placed a dollar value on the work a wife does in keeping house and raising the children, but that’s a whole other matter.

3

I think the key is around communication.

If Mrs. H decides she needs to leave but wants to delay her departure until she is done school this is the time she needs to talk to Mr.H about it. It really would be shitty to make the decision and simply wait until the time was right for her without including him in the process. You say Mr.H is investing in the secure economic future of his child, but unless he has a choice about that he is not, he’s being taken advantage of.

Now if the reason she is leaving is connected to violence or abuse that no longer applies.

4

Are you assuming that the wife is going to get custody of the child(ren)? He doesn’t have any interest?

It doesn’t sound to me like he’s being asked to invest in the secure economic future of his child(ren)… he’s being expected to invest (under false pretenses) in the economic future of someone who no longer cares for him and who he may never see again after she gets on her feet.

5

She is probably going to leave regardless. It’s far more logical for her to leave when she has the economic wherewithall to support herself and the child when she has the child with her, whether she has custody or just on an access period.

6

It’s certainly dishonest. Yes, she’s using the husband, but if she’s decided to leave she needs to act in her own best interests. Which means staying for the moment.

That said, if I were the husband and found out about this, I would be less than impressed and a visit to a lawyer would be pretty much immediate.

7

Exactly. Regardless of whether or not she gets custody, the child(ren) are going to need support from two parents. Pitching her out when she’s not able to do that strikes me as counter-productive.

8

I agree. It would theoretically be best if she could make that decision openly, with no deceit involved.

9

You know, I can understand why some people would be against it, but when your marriage/relationship breaks up, and there are children present, it’s no longer about you and how you feel imposed upon, it’s about the best interests of your child, and nothing else.

10

It’s actually in the husband’s best interest for her to finish school first. She will be better able to get a higher paying job than what she is qualified for now. It could potentially lessen his support obligations. Often, wives who had no job during the marriage are granted short-term alimony until they are able to train for a job and get back into the market. It would be cheaper and faster for them to agree to stay married until she’s employed (because they would at least save on the lawyer’s fees that it would cost to hash out the issue in a divorce).

Ideally, he should be included in this decision, though. He might be amenable to it since both sound unhappy in the marriage.

11

The only thing anyone in a relationship owes to the other is homesty. And I would personally request prompt honesty.

He deserves to make a decision about how he would like to work through the next few months, with the full knowledge of her feelings and intentions. He may well wish to allow her to camp in the guest room. He may even wish to use this tiem to try to fix things.

She does not have the right to trade a lie for what she is receiving in the relationship; and IMO financial support is the least of it.

12

I also agree that there should be no deceit, but sometimes deceit is necessary in accomplishing the breakdown of a relationship.

13

True but it alters the OP question. The question isn’t is she obligated to stay because he was supporting her while they were in a relationship, the issue becomes him supporting her when she’s checked out of the relationship and he isn’t aware of the change. How that actually works out in the real world is probably even messier.

14

As someone who has been divorced with a kid…

First the issue of financial support of the spouse is completely separate from the kids. In the legal system one is referred to as “spousal support” or alimony, which is (in the U.S.) tax deductible by the person paying and is taxable to the person receiving. The other is called “child support” is not deductible or taxable for US tax reporting purposes, but just a transfer of funds from one parent to the other.

Alimony is due in the situation where one spouse has been historically been financially supporting the other for some period of time. Alimony will typically be awarded to the lesser earning spouse for some period of time 3-5 years. In the scenario presented by the OP it would be reasonable to expect that a court would award alimony to the leaving wife, so she could afford to continue to go to school. It would not be forever.

In the OP’s scenario, child support would depend upon the custody arrangement worked out. If the mother was awarded even 50% custody, she would receive some form of child support from the father to cover the cost of raising the child while in the care of the mother. Typically the amount of alimony and any other income she may be receiving are factored into the amount of child support. Once the mother started working and had income of her own, the father could petition that child support be recalculated based upon their two separate incomes.

15

Yeah but you can make the case that it’s not in the best interest of the kid to live in a house where the marriage is a ticking time bomb. I’ve known people who grew up poor and people who had to live with their parents’ fucked up marriages, the ones who just grew up poor generally had less collateral damage.

16

Oh, I realized I forgot to answer the thread title:

Is she obligated to stay? Absent any other information, no. Since you primarily discuss financial matters and children. I don’t see that she has an obligation to stay, and on the contrary, if she decided to leave, it would appear that he would be obligated to pay.

17

I don’t think anyone is obligated to stay in any relationship, ever. So my answer is ‘‘no,’’ she is not obligated to stay. In fact, it sounds like it would be in her best interest to finish school and get a job lined up before she leaves.

As far as whether she should talk to him… well, I’m torn. There is a divorce thread going right now in which many seem to regard it as underhanded to line things up in advance without telling a spouse you’re planning to leave. I imagine it would be devastating to be told out of the blue that the relationship is over, but then I think about threads like these, where people are urging the man to throw the woman out on the street, homelessness be damned. It seems like a ‘‘damned if you do’’ situation for both parties in the relationship.

This kind of hits on my own very strong feelings about the importance of being self-sufficient before committing to another person. The rule applies both to men and women, but women in particular have a tendency of getting themselves financially trapped because they are the ones more likely to be stay at home parents who don’t bring in any income. I feel many women would be better off completing their education and establishing some personal savings before they decide to have children, because in the event that the relationship fails, or god forbid, the spouse dies, they will be utterly screwed unless they prepared for such an event.

I am very up-front about this in my own marriage. My husband knows I have private accounts and understands why I won’t have children until I have finished my education. I suppose some people find that incredibly unromantic and may doubt my confidence in the relationship. The reality is, I’m happy as a married little clam and estimate my odds of ever divorcing are incredibly small. But… they aren’t zero. They can never be zero. He could be hit by a truck and suffer a traumatic brain injury and completely change as a person. Anything can happen. So it makes sense to cover my ass.

In short, she is not in any way obligated to stay, but I tend to feel these dilemmas could be avoided with a little more foresight.

18

Oh, agreed, and part of “the best interests of the child” would be for one party to move out instead of exposing the child to a toxic atmosphere.

19

She is not obligated to stay in a relationship for any reason. However I do think she is obligated to discuss the state of the relationship with her spouse and either be willing to go into counseling with him or let him know that she doesn’t know if she wants to stay. It isn’t in a child’s best interest to have their mom be unable to support herself but it also isn’t in their best interest to hear their dad talk about what a manipulative shrew their mom is for the next 10 years.

20

True, and that is why I would stand by my comment in #9 above.