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

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[quote=Anonymous]Sorry, NP here who is coming in late to the game.  We also married later in life and we just kept the accounts that we had.  We did get one more joint account at my credit union which we keep the bulk of our savings in, but we each get our direct deposit to our own accounts and just transfer money to and from the joint account to make sure bills are paid.  We share all money, so we don't have nearly as much bean-counting as you seem to have.  The money moves pretty regularly and smoothly between all three accounts and about once/quarter we discuss how much money should be in each of the accounts (so that we each have some flexibility in spending).

Once suggestion that I have, rather than having him "pay you" or "reimburse you" for the time you took off, why don't you have him pay for the equivalent amount of baby expenses.  For example, when our twins were born, we ended up with a few thousand dollars of hospital expenses, plus various tests.  Then we had a bunch of post-birth expenses ranging from equipment that we needed to buy (swings, bouncey seats, etc) that we didn't get from shower gifts, to food (for various reasons, our children were FF and the reflux twin had to have a very expensive formula).  So, make him pay X amount of baby expenses to compensate for the time you put in.  You contributed time for childcare and he contributes child food and supplies.  And both of you will have contributed to the early stages of infant care for your child.

As for your other question about equality in the long run, what you need to do is make sure to jointly decide the things that will affect both jobs, retirement, careers, etc.  Don't bean count to the dollar, but make sure that you note in the discussion of your work status, that you made the sacrifice for him to take on the new work opportunity and that at some point, he will need to make a sacrifice to ensure that you can take advantage of new work opportunities.  You can agree that this one isn't the right time to take that opportunity because he is essentially still in the probation period of his new work responsibility, but that the next time an opportunity comes along that will benefit your career, that he should be open to making a sacrifice to help make it happen.  But the issue that I have with many of these discussions is that instead of fighting for balance over the long run, many argue for balance in the short run which may not be healthy for the marriage and family.  [/quote]

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