One woman recalls family vacation snapshots in which her husband is nuzzling up to one of the integral parts of their domestic life.
It’s his cell phone. He’s talking business.
“They’re physically there, but they’re never really with you,” said the woman, now going through a divorce from the Chicago corporate executive. For years she played the role of executive wife, handling the myriad chores that go with the job and rarely getting any notice for it.
Husbands who are “married to work get a lot of warm fuzzies (at the office),” she said. “It’s not a power trip at home. I’m thrilled to see the stresses (being recognized). . . . The world stops when the company calls.”
The role of the corporate wife recently burst into the news when Lorna Wendt, the wife of a high-level General Electric executive, was awarded a divorce settlement that topped $20 million. The case has focused attention on just what a wife–and it is almost always a wife–is worth in contributing to her husband’s success, a question that plays out behind the scenes daily in the Chicago area, home to many corporate bigwigs.
While no one disputes that marriage is a partnership, the Wendt verdict begs the question: Are the responsibilities of a corporate spouse so taxing that she warrants a huge chunk of the family fortune? Can a wife’s contributions be so intertwined with her husband’s success that she legitimately “deserves” double-digit millions?
Yes, say many matrimonial lawyers and business experts. Perhaps corporate spouse doesn’t sound like much of a job description, but do it long enough and diligently enough and it qualifies as bona fide employment, they say.
The executive wife not only performs a range of tasks to project the right image for her spouse but also frees him from virtually any distractions that would prevent him from giving his all to the company. In the case of Wendt, she might as well have been punching the clock at GE herself, according to the Connecticut judge who ruled in the case.
“It isn’t a question of what I needed,” a defiant Wendt, 54, told reporters outside the courtroom last week, “but what I deserved.”
While few couples can relate to the kind of wealth that the Wendts had acquired over their 31-year marriage, the issue of a wife’s contributions resonated for many rungs on the corporate ladder.
“Just ask any woman who has been stuck selling the house and packing and getting kids settled into new schools,” said one wife, whose former husband was on the fast track at a Fortune 500 firm. “He’s already settled in with a new group of colleagues, and you’re left holding a sobbing kid who hates your guts for making her leave her boyfriend.”
“Her contributions made it possible for him to make the big bucks,” said Nancy Duff Campbell, head of the National Women’s Law Center. “The husband and wife may do different things, but both have equal weight . . . both allow the family unit to make the money.”
Mary Minton of Hoffman Estates, who was divorced in 1984 from a high-level attorney, knows the duties well.
“You are always on,” she said. “It is a job more than any actual physical labor. I had to entertain people I couldn’t stand. You have to smile when you don’t feel like it.”
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Everything revolved around the right image for him, she recalls. “He needed the wife, the big house in the suburbs and the dog. He wanted me home because it maintained his image,” said Minton, who was a teacher. “It didn’t have anything to do with caring for the kids. Mothers who work take care of their kids. . . . You have to perform well. If you didn’t, when you’d leave a function, you’d hear about it.”
“Even after we were divorced, he didn’t want me to work. He wanted people to think he was taking care of me.”
The partnership has already been acknowledged in other arenas, albeit not as generously. In 1987, the University of California system created the post of “associate of the chancellor” for spouses of the nine campus heads. Being a chancellor’s spouse routinely requires receiving dignitaries, orchestrating weekly sit-down dinners and overseeing fundraising–obligations that would make an outside career all but impossible, the board of regents determined. The title includes such perks as worker’s compensation, mileage and support staff, although no salary. (When a bachelor chancellor is named, the university typically hires a social secretary for more than $30,000 a year).
The Wendt case has undoubtedly sent a shiver through America’s boardrooms, but it hardly split along gender lines. Dorene Marcus, a Chicago divorce lawyer, conceded that she had trouble with someone coming away with so much money solely by the virtue of whom she married.
“You could make the argument, why should he be saddled with maintaining her lifestyle when she wouldn’t ever have this kind of lifestyle in the first place?” Marcus said.
On the Gold Coast, too, surprisingly few corporate wives seemed to be in the Lorna Wendt camp.
“It’s revenge,” snapped one. “She got lucky in court. But it has nothing to do with what she contributed to his success.”
One Astor Street matron told of one Chicago executive who, several years ago, dumped his wife and two kids, moved to St. Louis and wound up running a major corporation there.
“Nobody asked him where his wife was,” she said. “And it didn’t seem to hold him back.”
On the other hand, many agreed there was important work to be done by corporate wives, much of it in the areas of what they called “nesting” and “luster.” In Chicago and its wealthy suburbs, such wives are called on not only to organize social evenings for business contacts but also to keep up country club memberships and serve on committees at major hospitals, universities and museums.
To many Baby Boomer women, such a job description sounds like a throwback to the ’50s, when the job requirements were to be fashionable (but not flamboyant), play golf, be a captivating dining companion and, when accompanying your husband, wear a blissful gaze a la Nancy Reagan.
However, given today’s global economy, a socially savvy mate is actually more essential than ever, according to Mike Loewe, head of Relocation Partners in Troy, Mich.
“When you’re shipping people overseas, the spouse is incredibly important to the success of the assignment,” said Loewe, who has handled about 2,000 moves for corporate clients. “The public image of the organization is at stake.”
In many European countries, a great deal of business is conducted over dinner, and the executive who does not have a partner who understands this will be at a distinct disadvantage. Likewise, she needs to be resilient, the kind of person who will view her new surroundings with an “adventurous” attitude, Loewe said.
“If organizations want a return on their investment, they have to recognize the importance of the spouse. . . . Otherwise it will endanger the whole assignment,” said Loewe, who once had a client bail out after three weeks abroad.
“When families go abroad, the role of the wife as an advisee, consultant and confidante is so important, we’ve even coined a term for it, the `non-salaried employee,’ ” notes Noel Kreicker, president of International Orientation Resources in Northbrook.
Overseas, corporate wives must handle “entertaining at much higher levels than at home,” arranging evenings that bring together brass from the home office with local dignitaries and business contacts, she said.
On trips home, they often are called on to help husbands land prospective corporate recruits by putting a positive spin on living in, say, Tokyo. And they get to offer their own judgments on the suitability of candidates for overseas assignments.
Jay Frank, a Chicago attorney, needs to look no further than his own life to answer the question of a spouse’s worth. When he makes an annual trip to Europe to keep up contacts, “my wife works harder than I do.” That includes recording such minutiae as the names of clients’ children, their schools and interests.
“It’s worth a million bucks because people are so flattered.”