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When they get married, a couple commit themselves to joining their lives together with love and joy. Along with the love comes the responsibility to try to provide for each other’s needs. Truly loving one’s spouse includes making sure they lack for nothing – food, clothing, shelter, furniture, medicine, healthcare, and more.
The Sages ordained that upon marriage, the husband presents his wife with the ketuba, a marriage contract in which he obligates himself to support her and take care of all her needs, in accordance with the accepted norms in their time and place. If he divorces her, he commits to pay her at least two hundred zuz (which back then was enough to support her for a year). If the bride has previously been divorced or widowed, he commits to at least a hundred zuz. (Generally, the amount written in the ketuba was higher, and took into account the husband's wealth, the wife's status, and whatever they mutually agreed.) When the wife comes into the marriage with assets, the ketuba takes them into account and provides for them to be returned to her upon divorce, generally with additional money. If the husband predeceases the wife, she receives her ketuba money from his heirs.
The reason the husband is obligated to support his wife financially (and provide the ketuba upon death or divorce) is because until modern times, making a living generally involved hard physical labor and was done by men. Women were in charge of the childcare and housework; it was very time-consuming, as everything needed to be done manually (including drawing water, making the food, and sewing the clothing). So, a husband needed to be held responsible for supporting his wife and family.
In exchange for the husband’s obligating himself to provide his wife with everything she needs, the wife obligates herself to take care of all the housework and childcare. She also agrees that all her earnings and whatever assets she brought into the marriage will be controlled by her husband. Since the monetary terms in the ketuba are meant to benefit the wife, she can opt out of these terms if she wants by declaring, “I do not want him to support me, and I do not want my earnings going to him.” This means the husband does not have to provide for her; all the money she brought into the marriage remains under her control, and anything she earns she keeps. Along these lines, if the couple are both agreeable, the wife can obligate herself to support the husband since any monetary arrangement they make becomes binding. However, if they make an agreement which exempts one of them from the set times of marital relations without mandating that their partner must agree fully each time, the marriage is dissolved, because the mitzva of ona is a fundamental part of marriage.
These principles of marital obligations generate many additional laws. All are meant to help a couple resolve disagreements. Still, in the past, couples were usually in harmony. The husband took care of providing for the family, while including the wife as a partner in his decisions. The more she understood about business, the greater her influence. There were even cases in which the wife ran the family business. Many communities had pre-marital contracts in which the couple agreed to run their business as full partners with full transparency. Nowadays, even without such a pre-marital contract, this is the recommended practice.
