To think this is scandalous yet in plain sight because the patriarchy has no shame

All your life efforts and energy are directed towards them. It's the same thing as actual money. Your every choice is conditioned by them. You cannot save anything, you can't plan properly for emergencies, you often can't get promoted at work or find a better job because ALL the strain is on your shoulders. What happens if a DC is ill? What happens if the mother is ill?

This is not to complain. We wanted the kids. But so did the other parent. The child maintenance situation is simply not fair as it stands.

@Thewheelweavesasthewheelwills when you heard from him again, what did you do?

Have you applied for universal credit and 30 hours funding for working full time if you do?
Unless you are on an extremely high wage you'll be entitled to UC.

Sounds like my dad - said mum could have the house if she ‘admitted adultery’ ( she was innocent he had been caught in his 3rd affair), took all the money, car and fucked off to Germany - turned out the mortgage hadn’t been paid for 6 months and they were about to take the house - my grandad paid the arrears thank god. I was 2 - I’m 54 and I have met him 3 times - he never paid a penny.

Did she get anything in the divorce?

Really 100% of your income is spent on kids? So how the hell are you housing feeding and clothing yourself? Even if you had no kids you wouldnt live for free.

I spent 15plus years getting nowhere with a disinterest ex but I cannot in all honesty sat ALL my income was spent on kids. I also ate clothed myself etc

It is terrible, men can just walk away with no consequences. My 'dad' left when I was a toddler. Cleared my mothers bank account, took all their furniture and their car! She had to track him down in order to get a divorce.

He had set up at the other side of the country with a woman who had a baby and promptly had 2 kids more with her. Before f*cking off again.

I didn't hear from him again until I was in my 20s

Packed lunches - sure you probably had your nails/ hair done every 2nd day. Bought a brand new sports car and a pent house apartment all on 'his coin' 😏

Honestly the shite I used to hear fathers saying in the pub about the mothers of their children spending 'their' money on themselves instead of the DC used to make my blood boil. Luckily I haven't bothered with pubs much since covid because I don't think I'd keep my trap shut anymore.

Your son sounds like a good fella

My ex gives me £800 a month and our kids are over 18. He is a very good man and still takes care of his family. I’m often raked over the coals on here for never paying on dates and holding men to a too high standard but it’s not me that’s ever had to worry about being financially abused. I’ve given up 20+ years of my life to take care of my kids and I’m now at a disadvantage in life. He recognises that and still supports me although I am doing an msc later this year and hopefully will be employed after that.

I guess what I’m saying is you’re right. Most men just fuck off and leave you to it because they are able to. They don’t see anything wrong with it. They need teaching how to bloody behave and how to stand up to your responsibilities.

So the alternative is having a child you can't afford and struggle to take care of 'properly'? MOST are planned ~85% - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3898922/ so this comment applies exclusively to those people.

As I said, unpopular opinion. I don't get this mentality of "this is going to be the most important thing in the world to me. Its life and well-being are solely in my hands... but let's just wing it." Other posters have asked, does that mean only the rich should have children? People would slam a dog owner if they didn't have time to walk them or couldn't afford their food. Why are kids any different? "It's my right to have kids" - yes, but it's not like a car that you can sell in the event of a divorce because it's too expensive to run on one salary.

People often say that even if a man does not want a child, if he got a woman pregnant, he should still support that child because it's not the child's fault. That child exists, and there is a duty of care to it. Same thing. That child exists solely because of a decision made by its parents (for planned pregnancies). So in that case, I absolutely believe that before it happens there should be a pot of money, the integrity of which remains intact at all costs... even if the house is falling down around you and you are starving, it stays.

If he hasn't even tried court, I don't want to hear it.
Ultimately, he pays half or does half. It's really not about what he thinks is fair. It's about the kid.
"Bitch" is horribly sexist language, please don't use that word to refer to women again.

@Marblessolveeverything yes so women can negotiate a 50/50 spilt

Yes no guarantee you will be successful at court especially if the RP doesn't want to. Every penny you spend going to court is money you can't spend on your children. So not about not being bother to stump up cash it's about the RP shouldn't control every interaction or in our case say dad can have kids if he increases maintenance or jumps through every new hoop that they decide on a whim.
Kids deserve to spend time with both parents.

So while in op case dad doesn't bother with kids for every dad like that there is a mum being a birch and using her kids to manipulate the dad and withhold kids time with their dad

What if they went to mediation to sort custody out? I know that court is prohibitively expensive, which doesn't help. The op was actually about an absent father who was offered 50/50, but refused more than one visit a week.

It's infuriating, reading this thread about how many of you single mums are shafted. My ex husband insisted on 50/50 nights (I still cover 75% of dc time, but that's another story) as he was determined not to hand over a penny to me, the fool. As he's self employed he could have had an easy life not paying me a penny AND not worrying about drop offs/pick ups etc. Part of this debate is also the responsibility of the government to provide good quality and affordable child care and housing, as the lack of these has a huge impact on single parents (often mums).

Exactly! Men definitely should think before they have unprotected sex but so should women

Because men keep abandoning their responsibilities without consequences and children keep being negatively impacted, leading to poorer life outcomes for the dc, and MH issues and a lot of stress for their mothers.

Should be 20 threads a day until the courts and authorities DO something.

Men can wear a condom to stop having kids willy nilly.

Absolutely this! ALL our money goes on bringing up our children, while men get to contribute a pittance. God forbid you ask them for extra, for a big school trip or towards clothes after you’ve replaced their entire wardrobe three times in a year due to teenage growth spurts. They’ll just shrug and say “Sorry, I can’t afford it”. Well nor can we, but we HAVE to find the money while they can just slope off and forget about their children completely until next Saturday.

It's based on a % of earnings and how many nights the children live with the parent who is paying CMS

Once you get to 50/50 where parents both have equal number of nights then no CMS is payable

The problem comes in that there is no requirement to force a father to work to pay for CMS - many therefore give up work

There is also lots of loopholes when it comes to being self employed and cash in had payments

lol what 🥲

You can't abort children!!!!!! Holy moly, this argument annoys me. Most men don't abandon pregnant women, they abandon their own children.

I totally agree. I'm increasingly seeing posts that men shouldn't have to pay for/look after their kids as the woman should have aborted. As if having an abortion is as easy as getting a haircut and the woman should suffer if she doesn't have one. Absolutely vile.

We had a thread recently in which a number of male posters insisted that since women could get abortions (a very simple, easy and insignificant process, of course), they should have a right to abandon their child and not do as much as contribute a piddling amount per month. One of them actually called this "ethics". They were immovable in their view that the greatest injustice of biology is that they could not choose to terminate a pregnancy and they actually thought they were being incredibly magnanimous by accepting that women must be able to do this - but they should be compensated by consequence free sex and the "ethical" right to abandon their children. The right of a woman to bodily autonomy and the right of a child to be supported by the people responsible for its existence were nothing to their "right" to sex without consequences and to abandon children. You could not get them to see what they were doing. They were absolutely fixed and it was clear from their tone that they thought we were the ones lacking in comprehension and morality.

So I guess it really is as simple and depressing as that. Their desire for sex and no consequences trumps absolutely everything. And we are the problem.

In this scenario I would force 50/50 on the father, or he pays for half the nursery fees plus usual CMS. His choice.

I do appreciate that doesn’t work in all scenarios though