Non-working spouses income in a divorce

Guideline Economics

www.guidelineeconomics.com/files/Advanced Degree.pdf

The Personal Sacrifice Approach:
First, determine the additional earnings to date from the degree and deduct what the degree holder would have made without the degree. Next, subtract that portion of additional income devoted to the personal consumption of the degree holder and income taxes. This approach is much like the present value approach but in reverse and provides for the possibility for a buyout to occur.

Conclusion

....The authors believe that more attention needs to be devoted to the actual contributions and sacrifices made by the non-degree holding spouse.

The "Personal Sacrifice Approach" presented here for calculating an advanced. degree is not complicated. It has the advantage of providing a method for revealing the true cost of a degree that is fair to both parties in the divorce. The most apparent advantage is that it allows the degree holder to systematically payoff the cost of the degree.

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Concern:

Is the same considered for the supporting spouse (the non-degree-holder)? Consider this:

He was a biology under-grad. She was a Junior when they married. She quit college & supported him through medical school. Had she not done this, she would have graduated (with an English/Tibetan-Art degree) & he would have gone into sales. After he finally finished his neurosurgery residency, she stopped working outside the home & started working at home -- bearing and raising 3 kids. Now, 30 years after the marriage, the kids are gone, she hangs out at the Club, and he's fooling around with a nurse barely older than his daughter.

Following King, we must take neurosurgery income less sales income, less the Lothario's personal consumption & income taxes. [...determine the additional earnings to date from the degree and deduct what the degree holder would have made without the degree.
Next, subtract that portion of additional income devoted to the personal consumption of the degree holder and income taxes.]

But what of Mom? Where would she have been had she completed her degree & stayed hitched to Dad who was in sales rather than finishing med school? Given the 3 kids, she probably wouldn't have worked outside the home continually after graduation. Her job & earnings might have been different assuming college graduation, but she was destined to spend some time as a stay-at-home mom. As things worked out, when the 3rd kid, Buddy, finally entered 1st grad, she didn't have to go back to gainful employment because her husband was a rich doc.

Is there any part in the King mechanism (or in Court in these matters) for saying: "For the non-degree-holder, determine the potential earnings to date from the time of the marriage and deduct what the non-degree-holder would have earned without supporting the ultimate degree holder. [This is her loss of own earnings.] Next, subtract that portion of additional household income devoted to the personal consumption of the non-degree-holder."

The last sentence is the nub. Sure, she sacrificed in those early years. But she's lead a life of luxury in the last two decades so that the actual contributions and sacrifices made by the non-degree holding spouse have been paid back manifold. King seems to invite this argument.