DEPENDENT SPOUSES MUST PROTECT THEMSELVES

Question: In order to promote my husband's career as a physician, I gave up mine as a teacher -- not to mention my health coverage and what would have been a good retirement. Now, 22 years and three children later, I am disabled. At my husband's insistence, I applied for Social Security Disability after which he left me and the our children -- ages nine, 12, and 17 -- and moved in with his assistant who is half his age. Quite unlike his thanks for my help in the past, my husband and his lawyer now say that despite my disability, I am perfectly capable of going to work, and if I can't work, he should have custody of our children. Talk about family values. My lawyer agrees with me that this is unfair, but tells me that we should try to settle because one never knows how this will play out with the Court. I am at my wit's end and have no one else to turn to. What can I do?

Answer: Oftentimes, the financially dependent spouse -- generally the wife -- "hitches her wagon to her husband's star" by putting aside her own career development in favor of raising the family and helping her husband move up the ladder -- never suspecting that divorce might sneak up on her or that a health problem might end an otherwise productive career. And, unless there is a disability, depending on the facts, the family court judge could require a dependent spouse -- who has no training or whose credentials are out of date -- to be trained or retrained so he or she can go back to work and assist in his or her support.

But here, since you have a medical disability that apparently prevents you from working, career counseling and retraining won't help. This means to us that your husband should be required to support you. And unless your disability interferes with your ability to care for your children, we could not understand how a court could equate your inability to work with an inability to care for your children severe enough to place custody with a philandering husband who has taken up with another woman half his age.

Although we believe that folks should try to settle their differences, the settlement process involves a series of negotiations that move toward fair resolutions of the problems, not a complete surrender of the rights of one spouse. Here, it appears to us that your husband is taking unreasonable positions and should be taken before the court so you can receive not only your fair share of the assets, but also a reasonable amount of support for yourself, health care costs, and custody of and support for your children.

When a lawyer represents a person with disabilities, we believe that he assumes a high degree of responsibility which, from what you write, yours may not be taking seriously enougth. Have a heart-to-heart with your lawyer quickly as if he is ready to let you go down with the Titanic, you need to book passage on another ship to protect yourself from him and your husband.

Please send your questions by email to janwarner@flyingsolo.com or by mail to P.O.Box 11704, Columbia, S.C.