Looking for some suggestions on dealing with a situation that has me as a manager of a junior resource who recently sought out my advice. By "advice", I mean he asked me for input on a personal matter that he wasn't overly clear with but I will try to explain.
Background: he moved about 300 miles to take the position he's in now. He's married, no kids. In the location they were in, they were close to his W's family. In the new location, he took out a long-term lease on an apartment. He led people here to believe that he was moving and his wife was going to follow him a little later. There was a point he even said she had moved in.
The advice request started with "my wife and I are thinking about having a baby" (okay - sounds good!), but... it comes out that his wife is still living in their original location (after 5 months now), with her parents. So it seems more like "advice" here has to do with dealing with a possible problem in their marriage, although he seems perhaps in denial about it if he's thinking about having kids. My "advice" was the main priority should be to live together again! (Even if that means he leaves his job here and/or pays a huge financial penalty by being stuck with a lease until the landlord can find someone else to rent his unit.)
My advice also included asking about his wife's job search: she had looked apparently into one possible position near their new city and it didn't pan out. I noted that there are lots of other adjacent cities she could try. His reply was somewhat innocuous at the time: "yes, I wish she'd just make up her mind." Make up her mind about where to look? or about - coming to live with him at all??! It seems like in the proper situation, there'd have been POJA at the time he accepted this job and the agreement would have had her enthusiastically moving with him, even if she didn't have a job at the time - she'd work on finding one while living together. However, part of my question here is how far to take this discussion of personal matters, given I am his manager.
I do suspect he's feeling a lot of stress currently. His job performance hasn't been great - not as productive as I might have expected, and being one who went through a situation of my ex-W having cheated on me and we divorced, I do know how that kind of situation can be all-consuming on one's mind. My thought is to see if we offered him a few weeks of unpaid leave if he thought he could piece things back together, get his wife on side by maybe moving back for a little while (and I would hope plan A'ing her). I would be interested in seeing if his performance without a huge weight on him would be better.
It certainly seems to me like there are significant problems brewing here, having lived some problems of my own years ago. It seems plausible it's affecting his work but I can't say conclusively, and he hasn't offered an honest assessment, although has started to, partially. Seems like he needs to admit to himself first there's a real problem and likely come to a place like MB and consider it an emergency if he does want to save his M. Is it too out-of-bounds to suggest he come to MB?

I think you need be careful about the boundaries of your job. He seems to have gone to you with a problem about his marriage, and you are intertwining your perceptions of his situation with your own concerns about his performance at work. There could be problems further down the line if you need to speak to him about his performance at work.

There should be policy guidelines for managers about what to do when employees go to them with personal problems. There might be an employee assistance programme, or perhaps they should be referred to HR.

Feenix, I agree with Sugarcane. I would be careful about getting too involved here. It will backfire on you if you have to manage him out for any reason. I am a manager and had such a situation a few years back. An employee came to me about a personal issue related to divorce and I told her what I know about Marriage Builders. When it came time to manage her out for poor performance, she told HR some malarkey about how I didn't believe in divorce. I left myself wide open for that! Keep your distance.

I was able to provide our EAP details to him, so hopefully that's the last I need to hear on it directly. My manager picked up on some of his behavior lately, too, and asked me if I knew anything about it - I kept it as generic as possible ("personal issues"), but it shows that others have noticed things like him doing a lot of sighing, rubbing his eyes, and generally acting stressed. I wish him well but need him to be a productive team member, too.