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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are both insane. Is this a business or a loving relationship? Are you going to keep track of who takes more sick days? Are you going to keep a tally on who bought diapers last? If this marriage lasts 3 more years, you will be lucky.

Agree.

[Anonymous]

The way you 2 have it set up, he should've offered to pay you half of what you lost. He just conveniently has failed to see that 4 month as a part of your set up(agreement).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, on this theory my husband owes me big time for the multi-million dollar career I gave up as a top flight lawyer to stay home with the kids. And it was my choice. I had no idea he owed me big time! I thought I should be grateful for the fact he was working hard to keep us all going and taking on all that stress to pay for our house, private school, the tutors, college, the cars, the property tax, etc. etc.

Your situation doesn't really translate to OP's because her husband doesn't cover any of her expenses. If you were married to OP's husband, you would be living in a tent in the yard and foraging, while he hung out in the big house.

[Anonymous]

But it would never occur to me to ask to be "reimbursed" for my maternity leave or some portion of it. My husband is not my insurer. It seems to me you are basically asking him to take no income in place of you having no income. Why is it more fair for him to take a hit than for you to take a hit? Does he make twice as much as you? That would be the only circumstance that would make sense.

Seriously? She took the time off to be be with THEIR child. Not HER child. They should share the sacrifice. If he didn't pay all of the household expenses during this period of time, then it's not a shared sacrifice. Perhaps OP should have discussed this with her husband prior to having a child, but I don't blame her for not doing so. It's easy to live 50/50 until a kid comes in and the definition of 50/50 changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband and I met late in life and decided to keep separate bank accounts except for one small shared checking acct that we use for groceries, restaurants, etc. My four-month maternity leave was largely unpaid. Am I crazy to want him to pay for half of my lost wages?

i brought it up and he was very offended. I think he thought that I thought that he was taking advantage of me or not doing his share. It's not that I think that it's just that I take pride in having no debt and in the amount of money have saved especially because i have never had any help and really had to scrimp and save early on. i don't want to grow resentful that I took a huge hit and he didn't have to. He makes about 15% more than I do annually. I am not worried about our marriage so this isn't a matter of dividing assets it's just that I don't think that my bank accounts should suffer such a big hit and not his. I like the feeling of equality that comes from knowing that even though he's older and has an advanced degree, I can bring just as much savings the table when we make big purchases.

Am i crazy to think my husband should pay for half of my lost wages?

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

Yeah, see the bolded is where you "make back" the maternity leave money. Let him pay for some bigger purchases or pay a larger percentage.

We keep separate accounts, with two kids. On maternity leave, DH payed for more. I also conveniently always ask him to pick up more diapers on his way home. Cha-ching, $50 bucks a pop that kids haven't crapped on

[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.

.

We're a couple with children and we have separate accounts and a joint mortgage account to which we used to contribute both but now DH contributes while I use my account to pay for the daycare. We still do the financial planning together, aka you pay for x, y, z from your account, I pay for a, b and c from mine and I put this into savings and you put that into savings, but we have separate accounts. We use the joint account for mortgage and utilities rather than small things . If I / DH put an exceptionally large purchase on a credit card, the other 'chips in' to pay it off at the end of the month. It balances itself out. Over the years there were times when I contributed a larger share of my salary at others it was DH.

Still, it never occurred to me to ask DH to 'reimburse' me for things. When my salary dropped, he just picked up larger share of the expenses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband and I have separate accounts and agree on who should pay what, based on who makes more and what is fair. It's not 50/50, it's based on income proportion and what makes sense. It works well for us.

But it would never occur to me to ask to be "reimbursed" for my maternity leave or some portion of it. My husband is not my insurer. It seems to me you are basically asking him to take no income in place of you having no income. Why is it more fair for him to take a hit than for you to take a hit? Does he make twice as much as you? That would be the only circumstance that would make sense.

It seems to me that if you had the expectation that your maternity leave would be fully funded, that should have been discussed between the two of you prior to your taking the leave, and the length of the leave negotiated (and the funding source as well) prior to the leave. Your hitting him up with a bill -- essentially -- after leave is really kind of inappropriate.

One final thought. His duty is to pay for his child's needs, which I assume he is doing, and to provide a home for you. No husband pays his wife a salary.

Hi OP. I get where you're coming from. While PP's statement is probably a true fact, that doesn't mean it's the way it should be. Women's economic power (and thus every other kind of power) is diminished in society precisely because "no husband pays his wife a salary", i.e. women do a lot of unpaid work for family that is never compensated in any way. It's good you brought this up at the beginning of child-raising, because there are gazillions more ways that society thinks that you should be spending your time (uncompensated) in raising your baby. All the PP's who said, "you should have discussed it before" have forgotten how impossible it is for the childless to really have a full understanding of all the changes that come with a baby and how impossible it is to predict what you'll do in advance.

The fact that most women are OK with this set-up, doesn't make it right. Thanks for striking one for the patriarchy! I hope you and your husband sit down and have a long conversation about what equitable child-raising is going to look like.

[Anonymous]

WTF? Why should anyone - a mother or father - be compensated for raising their children? My DW and I raise our children together. We do not "split the costs." This woman is a loon. She sounds a bit like the one in a thread a while back who stole money from an insurance payment b/c it was her "compensation."

And who is compensating the unmarried woman who has a child, or the widow whose DH died in Afghanistan or Iraq or fighting a wildfire out West while she was pregnant? Riddle me that one. This whole thread is one of the craziest things I have ever read on DCUM. That's saying a lot b/c their are a lot of very warped people on these boards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, on this theory my husband owes me big time for the multi-million dollar career I gave up as a top flight lawyer to stay home with the kids. And it was my choice. I had no idea he owed me big time! I thought I should be grateful for the fact he was working hard to keep us all going and taking on all that stress to pay for our house, private school, the tutors, college, the cars, the property tax, etc. etc.

He would if he still expected you to pay mortgage,....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:WTF? Why should anyone - a mother or father - be compensated for raising their children? My DW and I raise our children together. We do not "split the costs." This woman is a loon. She sounds a bit like the one in a thread a while back who stole money from an insurance payment b/c it was her "compensation."

And who is compensating the unmarried woman who has a child, or the widow whose DH died in Afghanistan or Iraq or fighting a wildfire out West while she was pregnant? Riddle me that one. This whole thread is one of the craziest things I have ever read on DCUM. That's saying a lot b/c their are a lot of very warped people on these boards.

If you are expected to pay 1/2 of the mortgage while you are on maternity leave with no income, you would sound different.

OP is probably a troll anyway.

[Anonymous]

OP I wish you had responded re: did he pay for things you would normally pay for while you were on leave.

I think that during the period when you had no income, he should have picked up the expenses. That's reasonable and makes it seem less like your marriage is a financial transaction.

Imagine if your husband was a general contractor and whenever he fixed something around your own house, he presented you with a bill - even a 50% bill of what he normally would charge. That wouldn't feel very good would it? I mean it's his OWN house and he's charging you?

I guess I would feel kind of the same if my spouse charged me for caring for our OWN child.

But yes, if my spouse was basically disabled for four months with no income, I would pick up the expenses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes you are crazy.

+1

[Anonymous]

I realize that my husband owes me a lot of money for deciding to marry him instead of my other suitor at the time, who is now making much more than DH.

[Anonymous]

Look, in the system you have set up - yes, you should be reimbursed for that time off. Shared baby, shared "hit" to the accounts. That's only fair.

But the whole system smacks of a "joint venture" instead of a marriage. I have no problem with people keeping a small account to themselves, but the majority of money should be pooled and spent on things your MARRIAGE needs, not you as individuals need. The way you're running things speaks to two individuals who happen to be sharing a home, not a married couple sharing their lives.

But yes, in the scenario you have provided, as sad as I think it is, he should absolutely reimburse you half.

I agree with this.

When I read the subject line of the thread, I thought, "wow, crazy greedy bitch." But I assumed the usual joint-assets approach to marriage.

If you're really keeping everything separate, then fair is fair. No reason for only one parent to take the hit.

But the PP who asked about who covered the bills during that time also had a point. If he was covering the mortgage, etc. during that time, all that gets split too.
If you were still splitting the mortgage and all the bills, even while you had no income, then it's a little bit surprising that he's resistant to splitting the income--he should be able to see both sides of that.

[Anonymous]

I think the "reimburse" terminolgy is what is throwing me off. I think it is a slippery slop to start asking for reimbursement for doing things that benefit the family. Where does it end? I also think it is dangerous to keep score.

If it were me, I would approach DH like this. "DH, as you know during the last 4 months I was not able to really save any money and I depleted my savings. So, for the next few months, I would really appreciate if you would pay [insert expense here] until I can replensih the savings."

I would not EXPECT him to however.