Let’s say that we have a client who is a nurse. She met her boyfriend when he was in medical school and they get married. He has several years of expensive medical school that he has to go through, but she is making a decent amount of money as a nurse, so she is paying for his medical school. He doesn’t work during that time naturally, and she supports them both.
Then sometime later when he is making a lot of money as a physician, they get divorced. She wants spousal support, but in this hypothetical, let’s say she is also making a lot of money too as a senior nurse. Yet, her argument is that it’s not really fair because she put him through medical school and she wants some kind of reimbursement of support. She wants him to pay her for what she contributed to his education.
When we talk about contributing to the education of the other, where you have one spouse who was working, the other spouse was not working in order to go to school and better themselves, that spouse should not just be able to divorce and walk away. The court will consider what the working spouse paid for the education of the other and hopefully make some adjustment in the support determination.