To think we have to stop punishing parents for splitting up.

And when the men simply refuse to care for there own children? What then? Your earning power is curtailed precisely because of your responsibility for children what do you do when your the only one caring? At one point my rent snd childcare bill wiped out my wages I had to rely on my then 16 year old because I couldn't pay holiday prices for childcare without benefits I could not eat pay council tax gas or electric he paid zero and refused to "babysit" them

Completely agree with you.

I'd put it slightly differently - women need to plan and organise before getting pregnant on the basis that any relationship can go wrong, even without anyone at fault. So if the father / partner is seriously ill, in a coma, dead, etc, all those things can be managed. "Hope for the best, plan for the worst".

Sorry to hear that, hope she makes a good recovery!

Absolutely, I earnt much more than my DH pre children, but made an active choice that I wanted to work part time until my girls went to school. DH would have been very happy to share the parental leave, to work part time, but I (rightly or wrongly) used the 'I spent 9 months puking and in pain so now I call dibs on the part time' card - we could only afford one of us to be part time.
DH as full time has made faster career progress than me and now earns more than me, but this is due to the choices I made, and nothing to do with me having less earning power as a women.

And we wonder why there is a shortage of housing.

What we need is for people, usually women, to be a bit more critical about their relationships before getting pregnant.

clearly sometimes relationships go wrong unexpectedly and there were no warning signs. But often, and you see it on here all the bloody time, there absolutely are red flags everywhere and yet the woman is suddenly expecting again.

People talking about the amount of child support do any of you know the rates? It's 12% of the first £800 they earn for one child (16%) for two I can only speak for my area of course but at my lowest I actually worked out how much I woukd need to pay my ex and if I could still pay my bills and I could even pay private rent rates because I would get no childcare bill no excessive food bills lower gas lower electricity no need for days out or I could get a discount for taking my own children overnight it really threw into perspective how little my ex has to do (and refuses too) and just how easy he has it

Women as a group seem to be talking themselves back into believing they are reliant on a man and destined to be low earners.

literally for some women I know, not being declared RP would be a total disaster because of their lack of earning power.

I'm sorry but these days there is absolutely zero excuse for women claiming they have less "earning power" than men. Younger women (before having kids) actually tend to earn more than men. This is then curtailed by the fact that women often choose part time or lower responsibility work after that

I just did some sums. 29.9 million residential homes, 2.95 average bedrooms, that's 88.2m bedrooms. How many are spare, or offices? There really are not enough bedrooms for every child in a split household to be given two.

But, as a PP pointed out, the great increase in single-adult households is contributing to the housing crisis.

You literally quoted me telling me to fuck off. You don’t get to do that then whine that telling people to fuck off is “unpleasant”. Well you have, but you look like an even bigger hypocrite than you already did.

Its the hypocrisy that pisses me off Parents expecting TWO homes while moaning about a pensioner or pensioner couple living in ONE home!!

What do you think "ODFOD" stands for?

I love the premise that people are no longer responsible for their own decisions and the consequences😂.

if splitting from your partner means less money, that is not your fault, it’s society’s fault for not compensating you enough!

It is of grave concern to me that people in our society think like this.

Lucky you were able to move without an expensive legal bill.

Telling people to fuck off is really unpleasant.

And you will see, if you look at Mt posts, I don't agree with the premis the OP has presented.

Paying for their own housing costs?Why don’t you just do the same, rather than assume the state owes you everything you need to run two homes?
Do you have any concept of personal responsibility?

Something that infuriates me, and is the root cause of most people’s negative attitudes towards those claiming benefits, is the expectation that money will just appear and save you, allowing you to live your life unburdened by the choices people who earn ‘too much’ for any sort of help have to make.

The 2 child cap on child benefit was a prime example (or a solution to the prime example) - people who have to fund their own lives don’t keep having children, they have to consider whether they can afford another baby. They might not be able to, so they don’t have one. Whereas previously, on benefits you had no such worries and the state would just step in every time.

If I am thinking about leaving my husband, I have to consider the negative effects on our family that it’ll have. It would hugely impact our lifestyle, and that of our child. It will mean less money, 2 smaller homes, or keeping one big home and the other person living somewhere much smaller. I’ll have to consider how my child will feel and how we make it work in the best way for all of us. Better to keep the life and home and lifestyle she’s used to with one of us, and the other have something considerably smaller and cheaper, worse location etc but she has some of her old life? Or we want us both to be completely equal, so sell up and start again?

Why should you get away without having to make sacrifices and choices so that others can pay for them instead? The irony is that the people paying the tax that allows ‘the state’ to step in are largely the stretched middle, who will have to make the same choices but there’s no knight in shining benefits money riding in to save them…

If I was single, I couldn’t afford to live where I live currently either! That’s the reality for most people. Running 2 households is far more expensive than 2 people contributing to one single household. That’s life.

Yes. My support network in based in Monaco. I can't afford to live there and it is affecting my mental health.

Please can the state pay for me to live there.

If you are still not convinced you should pay for it through your taxes, I should point out that my family have lived there for 3000 and ten years.

I trust that settles the hash of those who would gripe about my reasonable request and who not are prepared to pay for my mental health.

Thank you.

I'm from Edinburgh too (only London and Bristol are more expensive to live in) and I'm in the same situation. So we live elsewhere. It's choices we make all the time. It isn't 'punishment ' if things go wrong as a result of those choices - it's life.

What’s the source of the £3000 the ex gets towards the children?

And where does the £500 you get come from?