I want my husband to reimburse me for half the income I lost during maternity leave

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you are going to need to take a hard look at your banking set up now that you have a child. Who's paying for all of the baby basic expenses, medical bills, daycare, child enrichment classes & activities? The current system you have only works for couples without children, I'm a financial advisor so I've seen it all.

+1

I think it's "fair" ask for your savings to be bolstered by whatever you would have put in while working, assuming he covered all the household expenses during that time.

In the long-term, though, you need to change your overall arrangement or things will quickly go to hell while you are tired, stressed, and paying for a child.

DH and I had a similar arrangement to yours when we were dating and renting together, and shifted to the inverse when we got married and bought a house. The inverse, for us, was that all money (conceptually) goes into a shared account and individual savings and personal spending money comes back out into individual accounts. Of course you can tweak the model, but we found it far less stressful to have the bulk of the money shared and not having to be discussing each thing we bought or asking for half of whatever expense came up or constantly revisiting whether our shared contributions were enough or arguing over whether coffee on the way to work was a house expense, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is 16:14 again. I make half what my wife makes. Our agreement ref childcare was she pays all the childcare expenses but gets to claim DD as her dependent. Anything else ( not daycare) is pretty evenly split.

So you both file your taxes separately even though you are married to each other and have a DD?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This place never ceases to amaze me.

Ditto and if OP's marriage lasts, I'll be very surprised.

[Anonymous]

I can see keeping separate accounts if that's what normally works for you.

Instead of asking him to reimburse you in cash, I would approach it by saying, essentially, "Since I took such a big hit this year, can you cover the mortgage/daycare/whatever for X months so we can even out a bit?" Make it a less threatening (and perhaps less selfish sounding) in-kind reimbursement.

[Anonymous]

Unusual situation, but I can see why you feel the way you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:i think nickle amd diming every aspect of your financial set up is setting up a situation for resentment and failure.

I don't think this is nickel and diming. Four months of unpaid leave could easily be $20-50k or more of earnings lost.

If the OP wants to pursue this, maybe she should look at how much she would reasonable have SAVED during those four months. Let's say she normally saves (in her saving account, retirement, etc.) $1,000/month. MAYBE ask DH to reimburse half that. This assumes the remainder of what she usually earns is usually spent on things that didn't happen or that she didn't pay during her leave (lunches and transportation during the normal work week didn't happen during leave, and she didn't pay the mortgage or groceries while she was on unpaid leave).

Now if she still continued to evenly split all household expenses during her unpaid leave (mortgage, etc.), then I think there's an excellent argument for accounting for that money somehow.

[Anonymous]

I just told my husband he needed to reimburse me for having his kids and being a SAHM. He laughed.

[Anonymous]

I think your set up is good, but I also think some compromise and no tit for tat is good.

[Anonymous]

OP, why does he think you should bear the cost of maternity leave by yourself? Is he saying that you got the benefit of four months with the baby, and that experience balances out lost income?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just told my husband he needed to reimburse me for having his kids and being a SAHM. He laughed.

I have before based on these posts. He laughed too telling me he is already.

OP, when you have a kid, it all goes to the kid. Problem solved.

[Anonymous]

Why on earth didn't you bring this up before deciding how much maternity leave to take?

[Anonymous]

Not crazy, but just dumb unless there was an agreement beforehand. Forget it. Anyway, you were the one who decided to give birth, and you wanted to take maternity leave. You could have stuck the kid in child care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why on earth didn't you bring this up before deciding how much maternity leave to take?

+1

[Anonymous]

I think the way you keep marital assets separate is a bit odd, but given that you do, yes, I think it makes sense that you'd get compensated for that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not crazy, but just dumb unless there was an agreement beforehand. Forget it. Anyway, you were the one who decided to give birth, and you wanted to take maternity leave. You could have stuck the kid in child care.

OP said "For what it's worth my husband wanted me to take four months off and stay home because he couldn't take any time."

Agree this should have been negotiated BEFORE the baby was born.