Ex going on paternity leave

I'd contact CMS.

This is a pretty spectacular bit of what-if-ery. There’s so much what-if-ing that the supposedly clever roles reverse scenario makes no sense.

If she were a NRP and paying maintenance to her ex, then MN would be telling her that she still has a responsibility to provide for her older children. Indeed, she’d be told that she should be looking after all her kids every day while she’s on maternity leave. Why would she not be doing this?

I think you should tell him I can’t afford the childcare without your contribution, but that’s fine. I’ve asked for a ‘holiday’, they’ve paused the placement for two months and I’ll drop dc at yours. I’ll send you notes re their routines.

follow through, draw up some notes. String it out. Make him think you are going to drop dc at 8am Monday through to Friday- his partner has just had a baby, it’s not like they are going to leap out of bed and all three leave the house before 7:30 to avoid you. And if they do, how mad will his new partner whose just had a baby be?? Furious… he might hide it but he will be a little ‘oh shit’. If you can start work late I’d turn up that first morning and drop the kids. If they aren’t there drop them at childcare and send him increasingly angry texts.

So he has now 5 kids with three different women and he's not really financially supporting the four kids he has with other exes;frankly men like him shouldn't be allowed to procreate further with other women if he can't support the children he already has adequately.

i think you should check CMS thing yourself. I don't think he will ever be in a position to not pay while your child is a dependent.

My Ex tried to do this whilst going on a sabbatical as an academic. I pointed out that if he elected to reduce his salary he couldnt bypass his obligations as a parent as the fees for childcare don't elect to go down just because he's chosen not to work. He had to take into account his financial obligations when making that decision to reduce his salary. My lawyer backed me up. He paid. Though to be fair his salary hadn't totally disappeared but it had reduced for the period.

Actually I’m going to take a different view, if you were paying maintenance to him, then got pregnant and went on maternity, and didn’t pay for the duration, nobody would be saying you should pay. I think I would try to negotiate a compromise, can he pay something towards nursery fee, even if it’s significantly less. I can see why you are annoyed, and especially given his treatment of you when your little one was a baby. Only comfort I can give, is that if he’s done it before, he will likely cheat again.

I would call his bluff and say great I’ll be dropping off the kids to you to save on nursery fees (even if you don’t intend to). Give him a few sleepless nights.

What a prince.

I'd be checking out his claims. He has already proven that he is untrustworthy and a liar.

I'd double check with CMS just in case....

But yes what a scummy man 😓

Have you double checked this with CMS? My understanding (as a receiving parent) was that the calculation is based on his salary for the year, and that it is only if it decreases by 25% in the year that they recalculate.

Even if they do recalculate, I thought that the difference is spread throughout the year.

Ugh he won't be doing this as he's suddenly become father of the year he will have done it for financial reasons so he doesn't have to pay you (and the other children before) He's a knob.

If you get a chance, remind the ow that he’s probably on the hunt for her replacement not that she has had a baby with him. That’s if he hasn’t already found her. Wanker!

Even if I still had to pay the nursery, I’d still drop the children off with him in the mornings. If he wants to be a stay at home dad then he can look after ALL his children. Arsehole! Make sure his contact number is first on the list at nursery!

My exh quit his job last summer - his choice - and is now on benefits, in a start up self employment period. Because of this, and him having the kids EOW the CMS has said he doesn't have to pay anything. I bought him out of the house last year so he has 100k in the bank yet it's not counted as income.

It's really shitty, he wasn't in a high paying job before but i am nearly £300 a month down now and everything is so much more expensive. 😔

I've had some luck with getting him to pay things ad hoc, like he's topped up the school dinners account a couple of times. I'm supposed to be grateful for this I think. Better than nothing I suppose.

You have my sympathies OP.

Check with CMS yourself because to my knowledge their calculations are worked out over his yearly salary and then divided into monthly payments (or weekly/1lump sum payment) His 2 months paternity leave will only affect his next yearly review calculation not this one. I could be wrong though.

Not just paternity leave and shared parental leave.

Every parent gets 18 weeks of unpaid parental leave PER CHILD to be used before their 18th birthday. As he has 5 children (assuming all under 18) that’s 90 weeks of unpaid leave he can take if he uses it all. As a rule you can use 4 weeks a year, but actually your employee can allow more. Sounds like he’s using some of this allowance.

He might be lying about the unpaid bit. If it’s shared parental leave, he can get the equivalent of SMP (or his employer may pay more).

Is there any info about his employer’s parental leave policies online that you can check. You might find he gets 2 months full pay and just thinks he can bullshit you.

2 weeks is the minimum. He can take up to 50 weeks of shared parental leave.

I’d try to screw him over with the cms by contacting them and giving the details in case he’s telling you nonsense, but I’d try to focus on the DC because it doesn’t sound like he has any interest in them at all, which is truly awful. It’s like he’s decided this new baby is worth his attention and his older DC aren’t. As they grow up they’ll surely come to realise this.

2 weeks is the required minimum but some places offer better. DH's offer 6 weeks at full pay.

Surely he just looks after your kids full time alongside the baby? And his other children.

No one should have more kids than they can look after by themselves on a daily basis, I think is the rule of thumb. So a man can’t have kids with multiple women and expect never to look after them together.