[DrewDevil]

Clerking for a judge is a stepping stone to prestigious, higher-paying jobs... but it sounds like she's choosing to be a permanent law clerk type... like a legal researcher for some gov't entity. That is not prestigious and does not pay well.

I have a number of conflicting opinions on this.

First of all, I worked at a big law firm for 4 years to pay off my law school loans, and it SUCKED. I hated that job with a passion. I hated having school loans too. Ugh, hated it. I can certainly understand why she would not want to take that kind of job.

I also am a little amused that this guy expects his wife to bring in truckloads of cash. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but it's my impression that generally speaking, the husband is usually going to be the prime breadwinner in the family, especially when kids come along. I don't know of many husbands who expect their wives to be cash machines.

But on the other hand, if they decided that the wife was going to go to law school for the specific purpose of earning a lot more money for the family, and made the conscious decision to go into debt, etc., with the idea that this was an investment in a more lucrative future, then I would sympathize with him completely. How specific did they discuss this beforehand, and did the wife know at the jump that this was designed to bump up the family's earning power?

Fourth, even if that was the case, a person is allowed to change her mind, and no one should feel like she has to take a certain job or career to live for someone else or to generate wads of cash. I left my law career to take a job that basically paid nothing, and it would have been nice for my ex-wife to be a little supportive instead of bitching at me all the time about how I had "sold her a bill of goods" (nice, huh?) Of course, we were able to solve that problem by getting divorced and me giving her the house.

On the other other hand, her position was fairly reasonable... i.e., when we got married, you were cranking cash as a lawyer, and now you want to be a broke sportscaster? This goes back to what the husband's expectations were before the wife ever started law school.

On balance, I say I side with the wife. She shouldn't feel like she has to take the best-paying job she's offered, and he shouldn't feel like his spouse 'owes him' any particular level of income. But... she should understand his resentment, to a point, and figure out a good way to tackle the school debt so he doesn't feel like he's made all these sacrifices for nothing.