Does your wife contribute to the running of the household and raising of your son? Then she's not a deadbeat. And if you reread my comment, you'll see that the deadbeat in question was my own ex boyfriend, who never managed more than subsistence wages from his business start up and left me to pay for literally everything else. So yes, some people who have "start ups" are deadbeats, because they use this fantasy notion of being a start up entrepreneur as a way to avoid having an actual job. My ex did that, and it does sound awfully like OP's bf is headed the same way (4 clients in a year and not doing much to increase that? I have a sidehustle that I do while working full time and doing a doctorate and I got four new clients last month, so pull the other one, it's got bells on).