To expect financial support from my husband

I sometimes read these posts and think NO this cannot be real, surely the poster knows they are not being unreasonable!!!! This is one of those posts!!! Your husband is being an arsehole. Your pay should not have been 54% less during mat leave as he should have subsidised you for 27% meaning you both should have been on 73% of your full salary during that period. Anything less is complete financial abuse. I am actually gobsmacked. You need to dump this dickhead in the gutter where he belongs! I’m actually furious for you!

Your DH is a complete prick - please divorce this sad, pathetic excuse of a man!! Get a good solicitor do not agree to anything further.

I assume they’re his kids?! Do you have to pay 100% for his kids. Suggest you put them into full time childcare and you go halves on that I’m sure he’d change his mind but I’d seriously consider leaving him what a selfish prick.

He lies. Don’t screw your children over for the sake of an amicable that disappears the instant you stand up for their well being or yourself. Amicable isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Get legal support and fight to get the money you can from him, to bring up your children solo. Don’t back down because he says so, they might be his children but they aren’t his priority so they have to be yours.

Don’t forget that you each own 50% of each others pension pots - I bet his is rammed full.

Also you will own 50% of his Ltd Co. and all it’s assets (including cash in it’s bank which will be siginificant), but obviously any company liabilities (debts/creditors) will be taken into account too.

50/50 split as married surely?

Withholding money from you so that you have to borrow to fulfill basic needs (when you’ve just had a baby!) is financial abuse. Get lawyer now.

You’re married. All the money that comes in belongs to both of you. As do the children and responsibility for them.

What a piece of work this pathetic man is.

YABU not to have discussed and agreed how costs would be shared while on mat leave with the child you both created, BEFORE conceiving the child. Now you know how he views money, don’t have any more kids with him.

Don't you dare accept 50 50.

What percentage of childcare are you doing? 70%? More?

So the kids need a bedroom each and so do you, so that's a 3 bed house and 3 lots of heating, food, cars, clubs and food.

If he has them weekends, he needs a 2 bed home and associated costs.

If he wants 5050, he gets 50 50 of the weekday childcare and costs as well as weekends and school holidays.

Put his pension in the table as well as the properties.

That's not how it works. CMS doesn't even look at the income of the resident parent. If you're going to be having the children the majority of the time, he will have to pay you. If it's 50/50 there will be no payments either way.

You need to prepare an invoice for the work of looking after his child. It's half your child, so that's half the rate of a nanny at around £18ph.

With an under-1 you're probably looking at about 16 hours of full time care a day, if you don't charge for being on call in the night. So he owes you around £53k, plus whatever you decide to charge him for carrying and birthing his kids.

However, the best option all round is to get the best lawyer you possibly can and get rid of the bastard.

Wouldn't it make more sense to just have a joint account (and no other accounts)? That way it's not a question of who's paying for what. You're married, not flatmates.

I have recently just been through this. His actions from now on will only serve to confirm you are doing the right thing. It will tough, you will have self doubt….but each step they will continue proving you’re doing the right thing.

I spent loads on solicitors and to be honest, in the end they didn’t end up doing much. I would recommend going to mediation before going to a solicitor. You can also try McKenzie Friends, who offer advice for a much lower fee. Just remember, you will be entitled to a minimum of 50% of all assets.

He will need to disclose everything he owns and has saved. You want to go for a bigger share as the marriage has not been equal with the amount you have had to sacrifice.

also remember. The childcare arrangement and child maintenance are completely seperate, they are dealt with under different courts. Don’t let him try and cross over the two.

And also download a parenting app immediately and then you need to ask questions in the parenting app like when will you be available to do your share of the childcare this evening? On the basis that you left this morning without helping?
No reply is a reply
If he refuses to download the app again, there’s your answer.
But you will only be communicating through that or in writing through email
Preferably though the app the courts like the app

I lost my message but what I was going to say was you need to inform whichever solicitor you engage that he is liable to be a vexatious litigant
And that Shane or he needs to make it very clear to the other side that you will not be playing that game and any hint of it you will be asking for costs to be awarded.
His Solicitor shit themselves because they won’t want to be associated or tarred with that brush.
And if he does play that game, it is quite likely he will get costs awarded against him
The other thing Uk Solicitor needs to go in with section one of the children’s act
You’re not gonna get any child support out of this man.
You need to have a more generous share of the assets to compensate for that

This is madness.
I know it's too late, but in your situation I would have simply refused to pay anything more than 50% of my maternity pay when on maternity leave with the first child. I would have never ever stoop as low as to ask my parents to lend me money for bills while on maternity leave knowing that my DH is loaded... I'm shocked to say the least.

I’m going on Maternity leave next week and although we don’t have a joint account, the money is very much shared. We earn roughly the same on paper however he has been doing a lot of overtime over the last 12months so as a result comes out with approx £1.5k a month more than I do. That extra money has gone into savings for when I’m on maternity leave and earning 50% less, and has paid for a hell of a lot of work to be done on the house before baby arrives, had paid for all of the nursery furniture/pram/car seats and other expenses.

as it stands now, we both put 50/50 into bills/mortgage. Some come out of my bank however most come out of his, so it works out I send him money each month to cover my half after I’ve taken into account the bills that come from my bank account. We have both decided that during my maternity leave, he is not going to do overtime (or at least not the number of hours he has been doing as he wants to be home as much as possible) and I will not be sending him my half of the bills that come out of his account. So I only need to cover the bills that come out of my account (utilities/internet/disney/netflix).

we are both taking a financial hit this way over the next 12months. I will be taking home 50% less, he will be taking home less money and paying my half of the majority of the bills.

so in a nutshell, he needs to contribute more, the children are a joint decision and joint finance, and that includes your maternity leave.

Oh wow, I had a similar experience OP. We decided I should not return to work until DC was in pre-school as childcare would cost so much and DH was earning well, we had no mortgage and DH also had rent coming in from a property. All our money was separate. We agreed he would transfer me the rental money which was £800 pm but I was still expected to pay half the bills out of it and activities with DC. It was better than shared account though as I'd have been expected to justify what I'd spent money on. I had several awkward mum and play dates where my card declined and I'd have to pay them back.

Yes prioritising debt is a common mistake mums make, know I did.

It’s worth running through a calculator because even £200 per year if you had invested it for 30 years is going to add up. You need to rejuvenate your thinking, marriage assets are shared assets and he has been leeching off of your

I'd love to see his stupid face when he finds out what's what.

Of course he should… why get married if you’re not going to act as one unit? You shouldn’t be borrowing money from outside the marriage if your spouse has the cash available.

Madness.