If your parent didn't pay maintenance how does it affect your relationship with them now you're grown up?

[Terramirabilis]

I read so many threads on here about parents who leave their children and presumably formerly loved partner/spouse in the lurch by not paying maintenance. People doing things like getting paid cash in hand to avoid paying what's due. Some of these parents still see their kids, they just don't want to pay for them. I know children won't understand necessarily at the time what impact that has on their parent who has to struggle to make ends meet. But what happens when they're grown up? Can you respect and love a parent who did that to you and your other parent?

I have a very minimal relationship with my dad. Mainly due to his lack of care which includes maintenance.

I'm sorry for so many of you suffering because of feckless parents. It's very hard.

Dh is very LC with his father, a maintenance refuser, symptomatic of also being a crap father in general.

I have a good relationship with my dad now but I spent many years being angry with him which he didn't notice anyway because he didn't give a shit - the maintenance non payment was a small symptom of that. I completely forgive him because he is not the same person he was and if he could go back in time he would do it all differently. It wasn't easy but I realised that my life is better with him in it and that I was only hurting myself by being bitter. Otoh my mum never went to the CSA and always threw it at me that my dad obviously didn't care about me or he would be paying, she didn't attempt to get any money from the house which had been jointly owned and we went without a lot of things because of it. We don't have much of a relationship these days as she is so stuck in her martyr mindset and if I dare challenge her I am so ungrateful for everything she's ever done for me etc, imo she put her choice to say she had done it all by herself above her children's welfare and that does not make her the better parent

I practice family law in the US. Overwhelmingly, the men are concerned with paying as little child support as possible and the women are concerned with feeding, raising and schooling their children. The men seem simply unable to realize that the money is for food, clothing and shelter and not some sort of monthly cash bonus to a now hated ex partner. It's v v frustrating and I don't put up with any bullshit about it - tell them, "your children still need to eat, etc". Poor moms. Poor kids. Asshole men, some of whom whine, "but I've got bills to pay!"

My mother decided she didn’t want to accept maintenance from my Father, though he wanted to pay. She left him for another man and didn’t want him to see me. I think it sort of justified something in her head. She herself admitted my Father didn’t do anything bad.

As a teenager when I was able to see him , she kept him from seeing me from age two to thirteen he used to give money directly to me.

My dad paid the absolute minimum he could get away with and worked in the US for several years without telling us he had moved abroad so he didn’t have to increase maintenance. He still does make it clear that he resented paying - I didn’t get birthday / Christmas presents or pocket money as he paid £15 a month CM. It’s all about him winning - he rang up on my 16 birthday not to wish me happy birthday but to remind my mum that maintenance would stop. Same now I am disabled with a degenerative spinal condition no sympathy and he will only send me birthday/ Christmas presents if I get a job as he is supporting me through his taxes. Went NC last year and I feel so much better for it. Annoyingly he supports all my cousins emotionally and financially just not his own daughter.

Mine paid the bare minimum until the day I was 18 - just £10 a week. I grew up poor with a mum on disability benefits and she held the threat of the CSA over him yet didn’t ever follow through. He totally resented even that £10.

It pains me when I see what my brother/his child with his wife gets in comparison to me. I used to get a basic Christmas present under £20, no holidays, no meals out when I was on his access weekend (usually dumped at his mums) he didn’t and still doesn’t phone me or ask about me. When I went to university literally 30 minutes from him I never had any calls or support, let alone a visit.

My brother is 15 years younger and has had everything he wanted. Expensive presents, regular holidays (even just weekends away in the UK), regular calls and trips to see him in university (a lot further away than mine was) enotional and financial support, etc etc.

It hurts and I have a poor relationship with my dad because of it.

And I forgot - moved house when I was 18 and didn’t tell me for two years!!!

My friend has the worst moving-dad story ever. She went to live with her dad (and his wife) at the other end of the country when she was 16. After a few months there, she came home from school one day to find an envelope on the table with a plane ticket back to her mom's and a letter saying "we've moved." She never saw her dad again after that. Her stepmum didn't even tell her when her dad died some years later.

These stories are so sad.

My dad didn’t pay maintenance for me and my sister. My mum managed ok. It was hard for her. My dad had a wife who was very possessive and we didn’t see much of him. It was a bad situation.

Later my dad did various silly and hurtful things and me and my sister debated whether to go NC or not. We decided to instead tell him everything he’d done wrong and once he was really aware of the impact he’d had he started being a much better dad.

He’s now helped us both financially as adults and is a good grandad to our kids. But he’s made a lot of effort to change and mend his ways. I don’t think a lot of absent dads are like that.

I have a slightly different tale to tell.

My Mum was the one who wanted the divorce. My Dad was a difficult person to be married to, self centred and inconsiderate (although faithful, never violent and gave her his unopened pay packet every week). He was many years later diagnosed with ASC. He took her wanting to split very badly and had a breakdown. He refused to pay anything and would brag to us children that when taken to court he showed the judge his bank statement with nothing in it when "I had three hundred quid in my pocket ha ha." Not thinking that he probably shouldn't have bragged about that to US who were on free school dinners (big stigma attached to that in the 70s) is behaviour that was both part of his ASC and the reason that Mum wanted out.

My Mum never said a word against him to us. It was a desperate financial struggle to keep going but she managed it. She made us continue to see him even though he was quite nasty to us in the early days. He died 10 years ago much loved and mourned by all three of us, his DDs.

My Dd is 17, she thinks her Dad is a total wanker, not just because he doesn't pay maintenance but that's her biggest issue with him.

Like others I think the lack of financial support is just part of the bigger picture. If you're not working to ensure your children have financial support then there's lots of other factors at play too. Many of which will impact on their adult lives.

It's very common mow though to have children that are not financially provided for by one or both parents and there's no stigma so nothing stops it. The adults are fine with their choices but it's the chidren that have no say and are stuck there until old enough to leave as they can see the light.

My father was very hands off when I was growing up. Throughout high school he was meant to pay maintenance and towards various school costs. We got nada.

I’m now in my 40s and I’ve seen him half a dozen times since then. He doesn’t remember birthdays, nothing at Christmas, no effort to see grandchildren. My care factor now is less than zero. In fact Id actively (and indeed have done) avoid anything that puts me in contact with him.

My parents divorced when I was 6 months old and my dad never paid maintenance for me - in fact he actively went on the sick to avoid having to pay anything towards my upbringing! Growing up I would see him on my birthday, at some point around Christmas and at Easter with £20 and a card. This happened every year until I was about 13.

My mum worked up to 3 jobs at once to bring me up herself

We lost touch during my teens and got back in touch in my earlier 20s via my half brother. I once rang him to ask if I could borrow £10 (normal child/parent situation) and he said "you only ring me when you want something" and I replied "at least I call you" and that was the last time I spoke to him... I'm now 32 and have zero contact with him - even last year when my dm died he didn't get in touch...

My dps split when I was a baby. He never paid anything, hardly saw him as dm insisted he visit out flat to see me. Contact dwindled. I tried to rekindle during teen years. A weekly visit where he bought me a pasty. Dsm never allowed a plate and df never overruled her. No drink either..
Made me see why dm wasn't willing to send me off to see him. Not just about money.
He won big on the football pools when I had dc.. Never got a penny.
Not grabby but he had a chance to redeem himself via the dc and he didn't.
Dsm started being odd about him visiting us so he stopped..
He was never financially /emotionally available it seemed.
Nc for over 20 years now.

I didn't know/realise until I hit later teenage years.

My mum never slagged my dad off to me, but I had the realisation that everything was on his terms, as in staying with him etc., what me and my brother did when we were there I.e exactly what he wanted to do.

He was meant to give my mum £10 per week for me and my brother and she had to take him to court twice over non payment.

My mum split with him when I was a few weeks old due to his continual philandering.

I recall his numerous different girlfriends as I was growing up.

His second wife was 17 when he met her at 34.

I think he's on wife no 5 now.

I haven't seen him/spoken to him in over 15 years and I have no desire too.

He tries to track me down, but I'm just not interested.

The thing is, I’m having a baby and I’m using the way I was brought up and my parents treatment of me as the blueprint of what not to do

After I typed a message on this thread in the early hours, I lay awake comparing my childhood with my husbands, how his parents raised him and how differently we were brought up.

He’s learned self dependence because his parents are wonderful people who encouraged him to make his own way in the world whilst always having his back and providing him with the childhood experience that every child should have as a basic human right. My self dependence comes from knowing I wasn’t wanted, the fact I couldn’t rely on anyone growing up and the constant battle between my separated parents. They split when I was a few months old but they each used me as a pawn in their battle, either through neglect or by making me say things to the other person when I didn’t understand what I was saying.

I carried a lot of guilt when I was a teen/early 20’s about how I could have been a better daughter to my father and how the things I was made and encouraged to say to him we’re so wrong. How I could have been in touch with him more, made more of an effort. But as I get older I realise he set the tone of our relationship by never being around. He’d pick me up from my mums and dump me at my nanas for the weekend, only seeing me again to take me home. The things I was made to feel guilty for as a child and a teen I think “I was a bloody kid, it wasn’t my fault. The only reason I ever went abroad before I was 20 was because he took me to Disney World... and that was because his friend dropped out and he was going to lose money on it.

I now think it should be a two way street and I’m Not prepared to keep travelling up that street to meet him when he has barely had the common courtesy to do the same.

TL/DR: the only reason I value my relationship with my father is because it shows me how NOT to parent!

Mine didn't pay anything for years. Instead he liked to drink and gamble.

I have a fairly superficial relationship with him. When I do see him, he likes to regale me with stories of how he forked out for this and that and wasn't he such a great Dad

He believes his own bullshit and it's sad but it clearly makes him feel better. He's getting on in years and I don't want to fall out with him at this stage, so I keep my mouth shut.

But the fact is, he was spectacularly selfish and made some very poor decisions. I suffered as a result.