AIBU to think this was an inappropriate use of benefits/child maintenance?

Not true at all

It is not a “waste“ of funding unless, OP, you can propose something else that meets the child’s needs and costs less. Don’t bother looking because there isn’t anything.

What I think you are saying is that you were unaware until now of the extraordinary high cost of providing care for children with complex needs. By the way, there is a national shortage of foster carers.

This is not news to anybody who’s been involved in this area of work for the shortest amount of time.

It’s been noted for decades that looking after a child in care costs more per month than funding a term at Eton College.

It depends when this was. Years ago, maintenance did affect benefits, but then it was changed.

If you didn’t have enough to eat, be warm and washed then you were neglected.

Definitely, when I claimed income support in 2005 I almost got into trouble for being scrupulously honest and telling the person from income support who phoned that my ex had given me the odd fiver or tenner here and there but nothing regular or reliable. He didn't have a job then and was just getting a bit of casual work from time to time.

Luckily for me when they contacted him he was (unusually for him) decent enough to say that the money he'd given me was a gift, not child support so I wasn't penalised for claiming income support while getting a tiny and unreliable amount of child support.

Is there a chance your aunt is trying to stir uo shit and doesn’t know for a fact how much your mother got. I’m assuming she got a job when you were old enough as she needed money.

Not now, but it was up until about 2010, which is the period the OP is talking about.

Well that’s not entirely fair - parenting has changed hugely over the years and what was perfectly reasonable then wouldn’t be considered so now.

I grew up with one bath a week, as did my friends. The cost and time for heating water meant most families had a bath night, it wasn’t neglectful at the time but most people bathe more frequently now. Most of my clothes were handed down from my sister and family friends - money was tight and the clothes hardly worn as kids grew out of them. Warm, fitting clothes were more important than nice or fashionable. My parents had new clothes, because they wore their stuff to death and people didn’t hand down adult clothes.

I could frame that as “my parents always bought themselves new clothes and the kids got everything second hand” but that wouldn’t be the whole story and might sound neglectful, but wasn’t.

It’s not usually a good idea to compare how you were parented 20, 30 years ago with what’s accepted now. Even in that space of time expectations have changed hugely.

Correction to typing- though it was not nor was it 😅

Child maintenance is not taken into account when calculating universal credit.

Yes as benefits advice is my profession I found this odd.

Generally speaking in the UK, CM is disregarded for means tested benefits. Whilst some of the old legacy benefits up until 2010 deducted.

I'm not sure if UC was applicable but child maintenance is not taken into account for it in any case, nor is it for most of the legacy means tested benefits.

Here is how you know if it was neglectful. Would you do it to your children? Bet the answer is no.

Yes. Maintenance was taken into account for benefits.

You’re talking about the time frame from 1997-2010. Benefits were far from generous coming out of a Tory government at that time. While benefit reform did lift many children out of poverty, no one was receiving £1,000s from the state at that time. Your mum was left with two small children and no income, money will have been very tight - I couldn’t grudge her having a bath tbh and showering every other day isn’t a huge deal, young children don’t need a daily shower unless they’re doing something particularly mucky.

No child should need to worry about the basics, too many do because of poverty levels, and child poverty was much worse at the turn of the millennium. You’re comparing current benefit levels and rules, it was very very different when you were a child. Your mum simply won’t have been living a life of luxury on benefits/maintenance at that time. It may be that she didn’t prioritise as well as she could, but it sounds like money was tight. You seem to be favouring your alcoholic dad, who walked out on a woman leaving her with small children and blaming your mum for your living circumstances without considering the pressures she will have been under at a time when the social safety net was much less than it is now.

That calculator isn’t even accurate on today’s figures.

I’m a single mum of two children with a mortgaged house and this is what I would get (plus child benefit) if I didn’t work (I get much less than this because of my salary). This is taken from this month’s UC statement so about as accurate as you can get.

Mmm. I had two older half siblings. My half brother (as a kid) once said to my mum that “you have everything and we have nothing”. My mum maintains to this day that our dad went over and above with maintenance to his ex wife. Obviously both things cannot be true. I expect the real truth is somewhere in the middle, and/or my dad was actually spending a lot of money on himself rather than supporting all of his children. No one really knows the truth other than the parents involved and even then may be in denial about what is a reasonable amount of support. My ex doesn’t pay child maintenance but seems to think that having the kids every other weekend is equivalent to paying anything.

That's hundreds more than the actual UC amounts

A single person allowance is £400 then £339 for the first child and £292 for the second?

In 2010- income support was about £70 a week. Child benefit was £13 for eldest child and I think around £11 for second child.
child tax was around £50 a week.
Realistically your mom was getting around £1000 a month -

Cost of living in 2010 was a lot lower but others were still recovering from the 2008 crash too so money didn’t stretch as far as you might think.

No she wasn't (because as we have all said, she couldn't) and no there aren't.

You can’t rely on the current calculators.

the child suppprt agency which was the government agency designed to get men to pay child maintenance was only set up in 1993.

child maintenance was deducted pound for pound from benefits as the original aim was to make fathers pay for children that the state as having to support.

now child maintenance does not affect your benefits but then it absolutely did and was intended to. The money was for the state not the children or the mother.

there was no free or funded early years at all, this wasn’t introduced until 1998.

you should have had access to food and you should have been allowed to shower.

but if your mum had pre school children she would not have had any access to subsidized/free childcare and any child maintenance would have been taken out of her benefits.

Positive. It wasn't worth it if you had an unreliable ex, as you would have no IS or CTB (or free school meals/anything else) and then he could decide not to pay it. Child maintenance were taking about 17 years to get around to chasing non payers and in the meantime, you'd end up having to pay an entire year's council tax in one go or have bailiffs around costing a couple of thousand on top shortly after he decided to pull the 'You don't deserve my money/I was too busy, stop bitching or you won't get a penny' stunt for the second time in a year.

Other thing that happened was if you did receive benefits and there was a resentful new girlfriend/mother in law/sister, it took no more than a phone call claiming that you had a boyfriend/cash in hand job/thousands in maintenance you weren't declaring (and you weren't seeing a penny of because they were imaginary) and the first you'd know of it was when there wasn't any money in your bank account or the post office staff had been instructed to seize your payment book.

Only thing that was reliable was child benefit. Assuming he didn't put in a duplicate claim out of spite, that is.

If she received maintenance, she didn't get benefits and if she received benefits, she wouldn't have received reliable maintenance anything like you'd been led to believe.

Who is feeding you the numbers? How do you know what your father paid your mother when you were 0-13 years old. You already know that the information about benefits cannot be correct because that benefit didn't exist in the right time period.

I'm sorry your parents both failed to prioritise their children, but it sounds as though someone (your aunt or your father) is now adding insult to injury by trying to stir things up with exaggerated stories about your mother having plenty of money. I'd be very surprised if your father, who wasn't married to your mother and only with her a couple of years, bought her a house outright and paid more maintenance than he was forced to.