In what circumstances will the court grant spousal support to a husband who has taken early retirement to facilitate his wife obtaining better employment?

In Yemchuk v. Yemchuk (2005), 44 B.C.L.R. (4th) 77, 2005 BCCA 406, the court considered the husband’s application for spousal support in circumstances where he took early retirement, substantially decreasing his income, to facilitate his wife obtaining better employment. The court said the following at paras. 49-50: In considering the concept of "need" in the context of a long-term marriage involving a sharing of resources, I am satisfied that it should take into account the relative standards of living of the spouses following the marriage breakdown. In many cases, like this one, where the parties have relatively modest assets at their disposal and no realistic prospect of increasing those assets given their retirement (and pending retirement), it is often not possible to replicate the standard of living enjoyed by the parties when they were living together. The most a support order can do is to attempt to alleviate a significant disparity in their relative standards of living following marriage breakdown. While equalization of the standards of living of the parties is not a stated objective of spousal support, in long-term marriages in which the parties have approached their roles as a partnership where each contributed their various resources, both economic and non-economic, to the relationship, equality of standard of living (which is not the same as equality of income) may well be the just result. (I leave aside those cases in which the parties, or one of them, are wealthy, since other considerations may apply.)