Trading Spouses

Overview

Trading Spouses, often advertised as Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy, is a FOX reality show in which two families, usually of different social classes, swap wives or husbands for a week. Each family is awarded $50,000, with the stipulation that the guest mother decides how her host family must spend the money. The title of the show is a play on the idiom Trading Spaces.

The show shares a very similar format to the British program Wife Swap. In 2004,ABC showcased their upcoming Wife Swap show including projections of its popularity. Weeks before the show's debut, FOX introduced Trading Spouses. The producers of Wife Swap, RDF Media, claimed FOX stole their concept, while FOX argued that TV shows have always borrowed from one another and that FOX simply beat ABC to delivery.

The show completed airing its third season on May 3, 2007. On February 27, 2008, FOX announced that it had sold the rights to Trading Spouses to CMT, effectively ending the series.