To accept this huge amount of money??

[RaspberrySheep]

I have been a long time lurker but could really do with the opinions of the MN Jury. Please help!!

Just after my dad died suddenly in 2001, I discovered I was pregnant. It was unexpected to say the least, but my partner was excited about it and we decided that we would have the baby. My partner became increasingly distant and when I was four and a half months pregnant he gave me the ?it?s the baby or me ultimatum.? He told me that he could not face up to being a father and he left. He encouraged me to have a late termination, but I didn?t want this, not only because I was still grieving for my dad but because I had fallen in love with my baby.

He made it clear to me that he did not want to have anything to do with the baby but I always hoped that he would change his mind. My little boy is now 8 and has changed my life for the better. It has not been straightforward as my DS has Dyspraxia but as with all mums, I am his biggest fan!

I have always worked fulltime to support DS, however in 2003, I was made redundant and was unemployed for three months. During this time I needed to claim benefits and the Benefits Agency subsequently contacted the CSA to chase DS?s father for some kind of support for DS. (His father had not paid anything towards his upkeep until then).

My DS was awarded £184 a month and has received this amount every month from his father ever since.

I recently contacted the CSA and discovered that DS?s father had declared to them that he was earning £15k a year. He holds a senior position at a company and has always earned more than £40k per annum. The CSA offered to review the payment and have now come up with a new award of £500 per month.

My problem with this is ? do I accept the money? DS?s father is very affluent and has been able to ?move on? with his life after leaving us. He has married and has a great job. However my life / career came to a standstill when DS was born. DS has everything he needs, but he has never been on holiday and I could not afford to buy a car or any other ?luxuries? for him. When DS?s father found out about the huge increase in award, he was furious and has now contacted me to ask me to consider setting up an arrangement with him directly, so that the CSA are not involved at all.

My friend (who is keeping an eye on this thread) nearly choked on her sandwich when I suggested that this is what I may do. She?s right, he is totally unreliable, he has never shown an interest in DS, never sent him a Birthday or Christmas card, once (the only time) when DS contacted him, he hung up. Not forgetting that he has been paying well under what he should have been for the past 5 years. However, I just can not get out of my head the guilt of taking so much money from him, when he made it clear at the start that DS was not welcome in his life and I decided to go it alone. I wish I could tell him where to put the money, but the truth is that I need it to be able to pay the bills.

What do you think??

Definitely stick with the CSA arrangement - to refuse the money is letting your son down. Save it up for him and give it to him when he is older (eg for univeristy) if you don't actually need it all now. Sounds like it is 20% of salary, which is fairly standard.

What happens if you don't take this money from him and then you lose your job ? It'll be very difficult to get him to start paying again.

excellent post, prof. as an aside, i was FURIOUS when a friend of mine took the high road in her divorce, and got nowhere near what she should have done. if she hadn't supported him for a decade and sidelined her own very successful career to do so, she'd have had a much better standard of living than she does now. please bear this in mind, OP, you are not comparing like with like, you are dealing with a man who has shirked his responsibilities and done well financially because of it. and now his pigeons are coming home to roost...

But remember what I said before people live to their income, if you had stayed together your son would have a life to this higher income.

Funny how has now started showing an interest when he wants something from you.
Don't fall for it.

absolutely take the money! Your DS is his responsibility too. And stick with the CSA too IMO.....especially if he's as unreliable as you say.

TAKE THE MONEY.
Your son deserves it!

Do you accept the money?

Fecking right you do!

Ditto, everyone else, take the money!!!!!!! When you have sex this is one of the potential outcomes that you have to deal with. And 4.5 months pg is far too late to be mentioning terminations imho.

Another vote for taking the money. It's not you he is paying it for, it's for ds, and it was not you who worked out the figure, it's the CSA. So, you have a moral obligation to your ds to take it, as I see it.

My dh pays 800pcm for his son from a brief relationship, and son is almost 14. We never see him, the mother is a lunatic and in and out of jail. She tried to barter with us for yet more money, to see Dh's son, which stikes me as a pay per view. But the money for maintenance is entirely separate from contact, and so you must accept it. If ex wants to start a relationship with your son and you are unhappy and unsure, don't feel you must because of the money. Entirely separate things.

Good luck, you sound like a brilliant mum. Enjoy treating yourself and your son for once.

Another one here in agreement with the majority. Take the money, and keep it formal through the CSA. You don't really have the right to turn this money down on behalf of your son - it's his, for his upbringing, to make his life more comfortable.

He didn't make it clear 'from the start' that he didn't want to be involved - you both decided you wanted to keep the baby. It was only later - very much later - in the pregnancy that he got cold feet.

Get all the money you can off him, the weazel that he is...dads who run away from their kids are the scum of the earth

i would personally not have a problem and i really cannot empathise with your guilt as i don't understand why you are feeling guilt at all - however my solution.... if you really feel guilty that this cocksucker should pay for HIS son, then take the fucking money put it into an account and let your son have the best university life with a brand new car and insurance paid for five years.

This may be controversial and against the grain but I would take the money!
If he did not want a kid he should have kept it in his pants or taken enough precautions to make it extremely unlikely.
The facts are quite clear -his kid, his responsibility on many levels - if the only one you can make him do is financial then so be it -his loss (and your DS's unfortunately or maybe not without knowing the people involved).
Always keep this with the CSA -it makes no difference to him how the money is collected so the only real reason he wants to make it private is most likely nefarious.
And I would be looking for an assessment for a retrospective payment if the £500/month is only making up for payments not made in the first 2 years (or will he pay £500 for x months and then have the payment reduced to what is should have been in the first place -ie he needs to make up the difference for the 2 years of non-payment and the years he was only paying £184 when he should have been paying £300 for example - in this case he owes you £10,560 so would pay £500 for another 53 months and then go back to £300/month depending on salary. Whichever way you look at it he owes your son big time.

of course you should accept the money on behalf of your son - he is entitled to it and believe it or not, the CSA will have worked out a reasonable and fair proportion on this mans income to be awarded to his SON.

After all this time, it is not your problem if he's upset about it, or cannot afford it. He is his son and deserves as much as subsequent children. Even if you were a millionaire, you should still take it.

No question about it.

Go down the official route. No need for you to have contact with this man.

Good luck!

Hi Raspberry sheep (great name by the way)
For what it's worth I've also got an 8 y o boy and very similar situation with his father, who got cold feet and departed when (because) I was pregnant.
I have always taken the view that it was crucial for ds to know his dad and have compromised a heck of a lot to make sure that has happened, much as I would have liked to smack the guy in the face, cut up his trousers and tell all his subsequent girlfriends that he's a closet gay.
Just wondering, is there any way you can say to the CSA you agree to take a bit less - £500 is a lot - maybe settle for £350? Or give £150 back a month to the father. I do think it would be difficult to spend £500 on one kid every month, I couldn't - that's a lot of money. That way you might not cause the interest the father is taking in his son to come to an abrupt end.

As a result of my AMAZING MATURITY DS and his dad stay regularly in touch and I get around the £300 mark a month, which I think is about right - we negotiated by private arrangement.
Good luck with it all. I really hope you can get this man to take an interest in his son, it would make such a difference to your ds life, probably forever. It's surely better to know your dad, (unless he's an axe murderer) than to have no idea who he is.

Why on EARTH should his on get anything less than what the CSA have calculated or his mother give this deadbeat father a penny back?!

If she doesn't need it, and she does, she should put it in a savings account for hers and his child to use.

The only thing this guy is interested in is not paying what's due. So he'll feign interest in the kid in order to play on the OP's heartstrings and try to cajole her into taking less, give her sob stories about his financial situation when he's known to have lied in order to get out of paying what he should to support his child, tried to coerce her into having a late-term abortion, etc.

This is a person with no scruples or he'd not have left his son to the mercy of the state and lied about his income to get out of his own damn responsibility.

Bollocks he has an interest in the kid! He's using feigned interest to manipulate the mother.

Loser.

Goddamit, in all your AMAZING MATURITY you are entirely missing the point. Cash does not equate access or contact, they are separate things, and the courts think so too.

The man showed no interest in his son, this is only ever about money. As for being a lot of money, I don't think so. As I say, we send 800pcm to our ss and of course he doesn't get it spent ON him directly, but it goes toward rent on a bigger house to house him, heat, food, clothes, hobbies and so on.

It mounts up, the op has funded this herself for many years, the father can't begin to make up what she spent.

Hard though it may be I think you need to accept that your ex is unlikely to be the role model you want for your ds if he ever did express an interest.

It is hard when you have to explain to your ds why he doesn't see his dad. My ds is 6 and I've had to answer increasingly searching questions since he was 2.5. His classmates ask him why he has no dad and it breaks my heart. Having said that be is a lovely well-adjusted little boy and I do think that any contact with his fucker of a dad would probably change that.

This money is a proportion of what this idiot who walked out on you and your DS is supposed to pay. Comfortably I might add.

Let's face it the CSA are hardly known for awarding massive amounts are they? and it's hardly a life changing sum... not enough to put down on a new bentley, or sign him up to Eton...

So FGS, take the money, put it in an account for DS if nothing else... but it's money for you and for him.

Accept the money. It isn't for you, it is for your son. You owe it to him to take it. He is entitled to it. If your ex didn't want a child he should have worn a condom.

And definitely do not agree to a private agreement.