Should I pay my partner's wife for her design help?

[Brandon Giarusso]

My partner and I just closed on our first flip together and when it came down to dividing up the profit we've run into some issues. He wants his wife to get paid a separate design fee for her involvement. This had been brought up when we bought the deal but nothing was agreed upon, which is our fault. I am really trying to see this fairly and thats why I would love some outside unbiased opinions. She is a designer, but not an established one, more of a hobby. She's done a few rehabs and jobs here and there, but she is very good. I agreed to give her full design power over the project, we made some decisions as a group but for the most part she just had the go ahead to make the final decisions on anything design related. In that way she isn't like a normal designer we would hire, in that she doesn't present options and pricing and give us the final say on what we choose, she just gets to go ahead and designs how she best sees fit. I always wanted to avoid trying to put a monetary value on what each person brought to the table in the partnership because that can get ugly. I did put in $50K more money and we used my $250K line of credit I already had from the bank to fund the rehab (which I already paid closing costs on). She did put in a lot of work on the project and I guess I am not opposed to paying for that, just how much that is has been bothering me, because any amount he comes up with is fine because essentially whatever fee we pay her goes to him anyway. I Would love an outside opinion on this because I really want to do whats fair and make the partnership go smoothly from here on out because we have more projects already underway.