(FORTUNE Magazine) – Maybe it would have been better if Hillary had just stayed home. Look at what she forswore: her own flourishing law practice, a lucrative sideline in commodities, the large charms of Little Rock. Yes, the plight of the trailing spouse can be difficult. Relocation is one of the most stressful events of your working life, and it's much tougher if your spouse has his or her own career--and doesn't want to ditch it.

What to do?

Start with two grand truths. One: Companies are willing to give whatever it takes to persuade their most valued people to relocate to key jobs, and that decidedly includes helping the trailing spouse. Two: As in so many situations in corporate America, the squeaky wheel gets the most. Consider:

When Ann Judge, a middle manager in human relations, was moved last year by Dow Chemical from Houston to Midland, Michigan, her husband had to quit his job as a physical trainer at a Houston hospital. But she got Dow to match three months of his lost income and toss in $1,500 from an entrepreneurial fund to help him launch a business in Midland as a massage therapist.

Or take the case of Mona Cifaldi, a financial executive at HDMG, a video postproduction outfit in Minneapolis. When her husband took over his parents' restaurant 100 miles away, HDMG bought her a sophisticated telecommunications package (including a 56K telephone line and a network interface) that allows her to spend just one day a week in Minneapolis handling payroll and bookkeeping. The rest of the time, she's working at her new home.

It used to be that only the trailing spouses of top managers got high benefits; now the perks are trickling deeper and wider in corporations. That's largely because both spouses work in 47% of all marriages, and employees are more likely than they were ten years ago to resist relocation. Says Dick Lind, senior VP of Fleet Mortgage Services in Stamford, Connecticut: "It's not like it used to be. If the company said go, you said, 'How high, and where do I land?' "

Typically, companies give a cash award or reimbursement to a trailing spouse who gives up a job. It can be as much as $5,000, but Rita Bennett, who has her own relocation consulting firm in Chicago, has seen a few rare cases where a company quietly reimbursed a spouse for a year of his or her lost income.

Employers will often help the trailing spouse land a job in the new location. Motorola also covers the airfare of a foreign-based spouse who has to return home to take a course or accompany a son or daughter to college orientation. And when one Caltex Petroleum manager was moved from South Africa to Los Angeles, his wife visited some Hollywood studios and decided she wanted to become a movie makeup artist; the company is paying for her courses.

Companies are willing to invest a ton to make an overseas transfer succeed, because if it doesn't, bringing the executive back home means a loss of anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million. So in some cases even nonworking spouses can also qualify for benefits. Caltex pays spouses on overseas assignments up to $5,000 a year to spend as they wish, from tennis lessons to courses in graphic design. To spouses who do not accompany their mates on overseas moves, Intel pays for four roundtrip air tickets a year (business class to Europe, first class to Asia).

If your company doesn't have a formal spousal relocation policy, you may be lucky. That means you can negotiate for just about anything. Your spouse might even apply to your company for a job. Motorola, for one, employs 13 spouses in China on a contract basis, in fields ranging from information systems to human relations.

At the very least, ask the company to use its clout for you. Carlson Travel helped the wife of one transferred executive get into the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. (Yes, it's named after CEO Curt Carlson, who has donated $36 million.) Lever Brothers wanted to move a manager to Puerto Rico, but she was reluctant to leave without her husband, an officer of a New York City bank. Lever is a high-rolling customer of that bank and used its influence to arrange his transfer.

One caveat: Don't take your spouse with you unless you're totally secure in your own job. When Dena Steele was transferred by Merrill Lynch to Hong Kong, her husband, a banker at J.P. Morgan, stayed home in New York with their one child and two Jack Russell terriers. A good thing he did. Within ten months, Merrill Lynch had eliminated Steele's position.

REPORTER ASSOCIATE Melanie Warner