Need your opinion... Does this wife owe him more?

[katyseagull]

This post is inspired by a disagreement between two of my married friends. I happen to know the husband a little better but both people are very nice individuals. (hope he doesn’t read 2+2! [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img])


Here’s the deal. My friend’s wife recently graduated law school. She has interviewed for several positions and has decided to take the lower paying job offer. As I understand it, this position is more like a law clerk than a lawyer. It is a govt job. She likes the people and also the hours (fewer hours than some of the other jobs she was considering). I imagine it is also less stress.

Her husband is not at all happy with the decision. Not only is he irritated that she accepted the lower paying job but now he is projecting into the future and has surmised that she will never be ambitious and will continue to be a clerk forever. My assurances that this will not happen fall on deaf ears.


Maybe it’s because I’m a girl that I tend to side with the wife. I think it’s her life and her job so she can pick whatever she wants. What’s wrong with working as a lower-paid lawyer? He says of course she can choose what she wants but he feels resentful that he spent so many years supporting her and going into debt and is disappointed with her choice. I think he feels she owes him more. I told him to chill out and to be glad she found a job and that she did really well in school. I think he should be proud of her. She is a very smart girl but like me she is a little quiet and not exactly aggressive.

My friend seems extremely pissed about the whole thing. He thinks that as a couple they agreed she would go to law school with the understanding that she would work in corporate law when she got out. I believe he feels a little defrauded or something.

What do you guys think?

How much do spouses owe each other to land that lucrative job? If one spouse works while the other goes to school, how obligated is the student spouse to find a job worthy of her mate’s standards?

[piradical]

What spouses owe each other is unconditional support. There might be trade offs in the gov. job- better hours, pension, medical benefits, vacation time. How does she become his slave once she graduates?

[Wynton]

It's hard for me to sympathize with the guy. Even if they had an understanding about this before she went to law school, it makes no sense to expect the wife to know what she'll want to do before attending. And it makes even less sense to require her to abide by an agreement if she changes her mind.

If this guy really needs the obvious pointed out to him, ask him how much he wants to live with someone who hates her job.

[RayPowers]

I think his standards don't really count here, but what does count is that she's taking a job that can keep them both living comfortably. If she's taking a job that will barely pay off her student loans, I can see why he would be annoyed.

From his perspective, he just spend a number of years supporting her and making sacrifices in expectation of some payoff later on with a higher standard of living. This of course should have been communicated from the outset so that things like this don't come up, but married couples are just as likely to screw up communications as anyone else.

If she got a job that makes reasonable pay even though she could have had a job that makes fantastic pay, then, well, they just need to work it out and he needs to deal with the fact that her happiness is very important or she'll burn out and end up with no job at all.

If she took a job that doesn't even meet what we'll crudely call her "minimal financial responsibilities" then I side with the husband a lot more. It is extremely frustrating to help support someone financially for years only to come to the realization that it's not ending when you thought it would be, and you may be doing this for the rest of your life because you love the person.

I'm probably projecting a bit on this one because I have similar issues sometimes. My wife is a huge spender. She also, fortunately, does well for herself despite having no college degree. She is a supervisor in an operations department for a bank, and makes a reasonable amount of money, however, she tends to spend more than she makes which of course comes out of my income. I on the other hand am an extreme tightwad who tries desperately to save every penny towards retirement, so our spending habits often come into conflict. Over the years I have had to reconcile in my head that her spending habits are unlikely to change, and I need to decide if my love for my wife is worth more to me than the stress she creates for me when she goes on spending sprees. Obviously it does, and thus I've learned to "deal," much as the husband in this case probably will need to.

But in my case, my wife is at least trying. She has a good job. She helps me with one of my consulting business. She's trying to do her part to bring in the income, and that goes a long way in my book. The few times she's talked about wanting to be a stay at home mom have been the worse times of our marriage because it becomes much harder to reconcile her desire to spend large amounts of money when she's no longer even trying to make any, and I can see my dream of being able to retire going down the drain.

Woo, that was long. Sorry. Just trying to add another perspective to this thread.

Ray

[Ser William]

I didn't know what a Law Clerk was, so I wikipedia'd it:

[ QUOTE ]
In the United States and Canada, a law clerk is a person who provides assistance to a judge in researching issues before the court and in writing opinions. Those unfamiliar with court operations often incorrectly assume that a law clerk is a court clerk or courtroom deputy, essentially a secretary for the court. To the contrary, a law clerkship is one of the most prestigious and highly-coveted jobs in the legal profession.

Working as a judicial law clerk at any level of government is generally considered to be a prestigious occupation within the legal field. It tells others in the legal profession that an individual came out of law school with enough competence and legal intelligence to earn a judge's trust and heavily influence his or her decisions. Working as a law clerk generally opens up vast career opportunities.

[/ QUOTE ]

If she is indeed a law clerk, seems like she just needs to sell it better to him.

[Wynton]

There are many flavors of law clerks. Some positions are, indeed, quite prestigious. But not all are.

Whatever the particular position is that she is considering, I doubt that accepting it will close off opportunities that she otherwise would have had.

[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.

[Colt McCoy]

How big are the differences in pay?

I can sympathize with both parties on this, and think both should have input in decisions like this. At the very least, he should be able to express his thoughts and feelings about it prior to her making the decision.

From his standpoint, he's sacrificed a lot for her career already and just when he sees light at the end of the tunnel, she's stopping the train. He sacrificed because she asked him too. Now she's not willing to buck up and work a little harder and/or overcome her insecurities to do her part in supporting the family. It's perfectly understandable that he'd be disappointed and frustrated.

She really needs to try to communicate to him exactly why she's taking the job that she is, assuming it's not just because she's lazy. I'm guessing it is largely out of fear or insecurity that she's taking the easier, less visible job. If that's the case, maybe they can talk her through it. His support can go a long way in helping her through that, but it's difficult to support someone who just wants the easy way out.

[youtalkfunny]

The husband needs to get over it, or move along.

[MrMon]

I don't have much time on this, but my wife and I have a similar situation, so I will have more to say on it. But, really quickly, here's the mistake she may be making. Depending on the nature of the job, she's taking, she may be stuck in it permanently. That first job out of law school is important. If it's some run of the mill government job, they'll be no chance to ramp up later if she decides to go for it. If she took the harder, higher paying job and decided she hated it, she could always step down to the government job. This may be an important consideration, and he realizes it, but she doesn't. More later.