My wife never went back to work after raising our kids. Do I have to share my retirement savings 50/50?

By Quentin Fottrell

'For 14 years I have gotten up every morning and gone to work while she has been free to pursue whatever interested her'

"My wife has about $80,000 in retirement savings in her own name. Our only debt is the mortgage." (Photo subject is a model.)

Dear Quentin,

I'm 59 and have been married to my wife, 58, for 27 years. We have two adult children who are financially independent. When we met, we both had good jobs - mine in technology and hers in marketing - and for the first few years of our marriage we earned about the same.

When our children were young, my wife cut back her hours and eventually stopped working. I supported that. We agreed that raising the kids mattered and it made life easier for everyone. She did most of the daily parenting, though I was very involved and kept working full time.

The trouble started when our youngest was 16. My wife was 45 and could easily have gone back to work, but she told me she needed to "find herself." She took some classes, traveled with friends and eventually began volunteering.

She has never returned to paid work. I didn't object at the time. We had enough money, and I thought she had earned some time for herself after years of raising children. But I kept working, often 50 or 60 hours a week, because I knew I was responsible for most of our financial security.

We're now worth $2.4 million, including our house. I have roughly $1.45 million in a 401(k) and IRA accounts, plus a pension that will pay about $45,000 a year if I start taking it at 62. We have about $300,000 in taxable investments and $650,000 in home equity.

My wife has about $80,000 in retirement savings in her own name. Our only debt is the mortgage, which we expect to pay off within five years. My wife essentially says that because we're married, our retirement savings are ours, not mine.

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She gave up her career for the family

She says she gave up her career to raise our children and support me, and that my accounts wouldn't look the way they do without her work at home. I agree with some of that. But I think there's a difference between that and deciding at 45 that you'd rather not work anymore.

For 14 years, I have gotten up every morning and gone to work while she has been free to pursue whatever interested her. She says that was possible because I earned enough for both of us. I say it was possible because I kept working.

She wants us to retire together when I turn 62, sell the house, split everything equally and start the next chapter with about $1.2 million each. I don't think that's fair. I've proposed dividing what we built while she was raising the children equally.

Even so, she would walk away with well over $800,000, plus half the home equity and our other joint assets. She says I'm putting a price on her contribution as a wife and mother and punishing her for not having a career. That isn't how I see it.

I feel like I spent 14 years financing her decision not to work, and now she wants those years of my earnings treated as if we had both earned them. I love my wife, but this has changed how I think about retirement. I'm considering working until 65 or even 67.

I don't want to retire and immediately hand over half of what I built during the years she chose not to work. Am I being unreasonable? Is she the one who is out of line and misunderstands the boundaries of marriage? And how should we divide our retirement savings?

Working Husband

You can email The Moneyist with any financial and ethical questions at qfottrell@marketwatch.com. The Moneyist regrets he cannot reply to questions individually.

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It's better to look at the facts rather than decide the "trouble started" at one point along a very long continuum.

Dear Working,

This is a problem of perception as much as one of finance.

Your letter talks a lot about what you have contributed financially, but it doesn't mention what your wife has given up. Take a seat, my friend, because she gave up a lot. Depending on the salary, full-time mothers and homemakers - yes, it's a full-time job too - give up anything between $450,000 and $1 million over their lifetime. Indeed, to put a figure on it seems hollow.

It's no easier for working mothers. An analysis by the personal-finance site Bankrate, released last year, concluded that full-time working mothers with children under 18 earned a median of roughly $56,700 a year, compared with $76,400 for full-time working fathers. Those figures were based on an analysis of Census Bureau Current Population Survey data. That's a 35% pay gap.

Fatherhood, by contrast, appears to carry no penalty. Full-time working fathers earn roughly 25% more than full-time male workers without children under 18 ($76,400 vs. $61,300). The Census Bureau data doesn't explain why, although factors such as age, experience and education may play a role. Women's pay also trails men's long before they have children.

You and your wife kept the show on the road these past three decades and, now that you are contemplating what your retirement looks like, you realize that your savings are essentially joint accounts, even if they have both your names on them. You could, especially in the first 15 years of your career, change jobs or companies or roles if you didn't like it. Your wife did not have that option.

Upon retirement, you appear to see yourself as single again.

"I feel I spent 14 years financing her decision not to work, and now she wants those years of my earnings treated as if we had both earned them" also gives me pause. You may not have earned at the same time, but you both gave in different ways. You were - and you are - a team. Upon retirement, you appear to see yourself as single again. That sounds like a very lonely retirement.

You have what you have - $300,000 in taxable investments, $650,000 in home equity, $1.45 million in retirement accounts and a $40,000-a-year pension - because of those collective choices and, critically, because of what you both contributed to each other and your marriage. So, yes, legally those assets are marital property and, ethically, they both belong to you and your wife.

Divorce law treats marital property as an equitable or 50/50 split, depending on the state. Marriage is considered a partnership that two people sign up for, regardless of who earned the paycheck. Unpaid work like childcare and household management has real economic value. Your division of labor was a joint decision, and an equitable split protects the vulnerable party.

Notably, you describe it as her telling you that she was "finding herself." That phrase sounds scripted. I wonder if that's how you remember rather than that's actually what she said. Either way, the ledger-keeping can work both ways. Let's take a closer look at the value you contribute after 30 years of work versus the workplace your wife would reenter at 45.

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When the 'trouble' started

Expectations lead to disappointment. You were expecting your wife, at 45, to choose the corporate path. I don't know why she has decided to choose a different path, but I do know that, having raised your two kids - and given birth to them - she was probably exhausted at 45, heading towards menopause in her early 50s, and was not ready for the culture shock of a lower-paying job in marketing.

The average salary for a job in marketing is $68,000 a year - more than double that for the median than - I'm guessing, as it depends on the role - your six-figure tech job. That's before income, health insurance, Social Security contributions, transport, etc. She would be moving from being a full-time homemaker and mother, which requires physical and emotional labor, to rejoin the workforce.

Wait, there's more. She probably would not be snagging a role for a 45-year-old executive if she had decided to go back to work 14 years ago. She would be deemed to have the kind of experience in marketing that someone two decades her junior would have, given that she left the workforce in her 20s. So she would be working eight hours a day, five days a week - and being paid the equivalent of a 20-something.

A woman returning to the workforce after a two-decade absence faces a significant wage penalty, earning up to 20% less than her prior earning potential or peers who did not leave the workforce, studies suggest, although I'm willing to guess it's far more than that. A 20-year gap compounds lost promotions and skills, and the gender pay gap tends to increase as workers age.

She would probably not be snagging a role for a 45-year-old.

One key line in your letter could be rewritten to reframe your history: "The trouble started when our youngest was 16. My wife was 45 and could easily have gone back to work." That's not when the trouble started. This "trouble" is an objective set of facts, and you and your wife are responding to them differently. You are merely looking at your marriage from two different vantage points.

You both earned this money. She did not stop contributing to your marriage when your child turned 16 and you decided she should go back to work. This "trouble," based on how you explain it, represents your set of subjective feelings about one moment in time. However, I see it as a preexisting difference of outlooks. On that basis, the "trouble" may have even begun before you married.

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10-01-26 2015ET

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