Corkyg,
In order to contribute to an IRA, you need to have earned income at least equal to the amount of your IRA contribution.

A "spousal" contribution occurs when one spouse does not have enough earned income to qualify for an IRA contribution, and still makes an IRA contribution by counting the spouse's earned income.

So for example, if spouse A makes $50,000, and spouse B makes $1,000, then the maximum IRA contribution for A would be $5,000 (since spouse A has at least $5,000 of earned income), but would be only $1,000 for spouse B (since spouse B has only $1,000 of earned income and cannot contribute more than that). However, spouse B can still make an IRA contribution under the spousal IRA rules, by counting $4,000 of spouse A's earned income to qualify. You can follow this rule as long as the total IRA contributions don't exceed the total earned income of both spouses (e.g., if spouse A earned $8,000 and spouse B earned $1,000, the maximum total contribution between them even with spousal IRAs is still only $9,000, their total income).

I hope that helps a little!

You can contribute to your spouses IRA, but there are a couple of simple rules to follow:

- You must file a joint tax return
- You must have been legally married at the end of the tax year

Additional info:
The maximum amount you can contribute for 2008 is $5,000 for those under age 50. If you are age 50 or older, you can contribute an extra $1,000 or $6,000 in total. You must also be under age 70 1/2 in order to contribute to a traditional IRA. Lastly, your combined earned income must equal or exceed the amount contributed to the IRAs.