One spouse must cooperate in the paid activity of the other, provided this is reasonable and the cooperation is customary according to the living conditions and nothing else has been agreed. The reasonableness is based, among other things, on the spouse’s own gainful employment, household management and child rearing and the ability to perform a corresponding activity. A prime example of a duty to cooperate is assistance on the farm. However, there is no such obligation in the case of purely salaried employment.
For the cooperation, the cooperating spouse is of course entitled to compensation. However, according to case law, this claim for compensation is merely a kind of profit-sharing claim, which means that it only exists if the efforts were actually successful.
The duty to cooperate can be excluded already at the time of marriage.
