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??

Take it! Through the csa. Put it in a savings account for your son. Don't you dare listen to your whiny liar ex! Be strong and stand up for your son!

Take it- your little boy deserves it-stick half of it into an account for when he's older-

i am with callisto

he did make it clear from the start...

i would ask csa to mediate and fix a middle/diddle payment

Have only read first 20 messages or so...

Unless you deliberately set out to get pregnant behind his back (and your op reads as though your ds was unplanned and as much of a surprise to you as to your ex) then you have nothing to feel guilty about.

If your ex had said as soon as you found out you were pregnant (presumably 4-8 weeks) that he was leaving if you kept the baby then I still don't think you have anything to feel guilty about as a baby is a consequence of sex even sometimes with contraception and he needs to take an equal responsibility for this to you.

However what he was asking you to do at the stage he changed his mind was to have a late termination which would have involved an injection into your baby using ultrasound to kill it and then having to give birth to your dead son. A barbaric thing to ask you to do (I'd like to point out that I am not against late terminations - just against someone being presured into one) and certainly not something that because you didn't go along with you were making him be a father against his wishes.

Take the money. Your son is entitled to it. You should be very proud of what you have achieved so far and I can understand why you might not want it but your son deserves this money for his future. The only way I would agree with a private arrangement is if your ex would agree to pay a lump sum the interest of which would provide enough money for the minimum amount you need from him to be able to support your son while he is small and that would be enough to give him money towards university / deposit on a house / whatever equivalent would be important for him at the time when he is older. I would NEVER agree to a private agreement for him to pay an amount of money a month from someone who has lied about his earnings so that he doesn't have to pay your son what is rightfully his

I've now skim read a bit more...

Please don't listen to his blackmail about losing his home. The money he should pay you is £300 a month more than he was paying. While ts is not an insignificant amount of money it isw the ballpark amount that on his salary ( and presumed lifestyle) you need to factor in as a contingency each month. We have just spent £250 unexpectedly on our car, £140 fixing our dishwasher and I am sure a couple of other things this month. Reality is that this sort of thing happens not infrequently.

So he WILL be able to afford it. He will just have to choose places to make cuts in his own lifestyle to finance it. If he had been honest from the beginning you wouldn't have gone through the CSA, and if he had been honest with them he wouldn't have the backlog to pay.

His choices, he lives with the consequences. I would have more sympathy for him if he had supported his son from the start even if he didn't want to be involved in his life. But all he has done is try to wriggle out of supporting HIS son.

Your son is entitled to this. Take the money

I would take the money too, he was excited about the pregnancy when you first found out, its not like you told him you were on the pill and lied or anything I'm assuming so I'd expect him to contribute, def agree if he's been lying all these years you'd soon see the back of him if you made a private agreement, he's only suggesting it as a way out for him and not thinking of the child at all so as someone else suggested even if you take it and save it for your son its all he'll ever get from his father

He didn't make it clear from the start. He changed his mind and then tried to bamboozle her into having a second trimester abortion she didn't want.

Then he left all financial responsibility to her and, when she lost her job, the taxpayer.

He lied to the CSA about his income. For a long time.

He's lucky he's not being done for fraud as well, although I understand that's counterproductive.

Sex for men with women can result in babies unless get sterilised and have the all-clear.

If you don't want to take that risk, don't have sex.

He's been calculated a payment in line with his income to support his child.

No reason at all to negotiate a thing with this unreliable liar.

If my own son did this - lied about his income in order to get out of his responsibility - I'd grass him up myself.

Oh, it's really hard.

I was in a v similar situation to you when I was pregnant. I'd split up with baby's father and he wanted to get back together and ditch baby; I wanted to ditch him and keep baby!

I promised I'd be totally independent from him financially.

He's quite involved now (if unreliable) but I did kinda feel I should stick to what I said so only took money from him when it was offered, iyswim.

But my situation was similar, not the same. You made a joint decision to have the baby and he then changed his mind; that's not what happened with me, so I think YANBU at all to keep your son's money.

I meant to say also we pay money through the CSA for my DH's son, not coz he won't pay but coz his ex thought she could screw a bit more out of us that way as she was furious when we started a family (despite her leaving my DH) and my income isn't taken into account, they don't take the wife or partners income into consideration anymore or any savings or annual bonuses so what you get awarded would be purely based on his monthly salary, he may have to make some adjustments but if he was paying for his son like he should have been all these years he wouldn't have got it to get used to, its like a benefit cheat saying its unfair they have to repay the money when they've just got used to the lifestyle it affords them!!

I was in a similar situation and as soon as I could afford to not take the money I stopped doing so as I did not want a man who showed such disregard for my child contributing. I also did not want to rely on him.

Take it and keep it through CSA, once you leave them it takes ages to start a claim again, it's not your fault he chose to do what he did, you both deserve the money!

Take the money, you didnt trick him into getting pregnant and if he really didnt want children he should have been more careful.

take the money

he made the decision when he put his unporotected penis into your vagina.

It would be so wring of you not to take the money for your son. How fair is it that his other children get more than him! Poor thing.

• wrong obviously

Also, think of what money he would have had to paid out for his son had he not changed his mind? He's got out very cheaply.

That money is his minimum legal obligation for child maintenance.

Take the money. But don't rely on it - child maintenance is best treated as a bonus rather than relied on as a vital part of monthly budgetting. Save as much as is practicable, just in case.

As to the risk of him losing his house. I personally believe that to be unlikely - interest rates are very low right now - but it's not impossible. If it happens, it happens. He's a grown-up. He made a big mistake when he lied about his income to the CSA and now he's facing with the consequences of that choice. I have no sympathy, I really don't. The CSA had to be invented to deal with selfish twunts like him who think that they have no responsibility towards their children.

Take the money, it's not a prison sentence, but a lovely boy, his son.

Your son's father is making a good living, and your son deserves to have a holiday.

think of your child and his tears when his father takes no interest. then TAKE THAT MONEY.

and he is trying to manipulate you into taking less from him by pretending to be interested. he is scum, as he always has been.

Absolutely take the money.

Think of this if you heard a story of a friend of a friend. A woman gets pregnant. The boyfriend abandons her and wants nothing to do with the child and gives no support. (I get the impression here that the support is a legal obligation in the UK?) The woman briefly needs to claim benefits, so CSA gets involved and the father starts paying a small sum. Then is turns out the father was lying about his income to CSA and he is actually required to pay considerably more. He may have to reorganize his personal finances to afford the amount of support required by law.

If I heard this story (well, I just did) I would think that the guy is a jerk. Who cares whether he can afford his (presumably luxurious) home -- his obligation to support his child comes first.

And I find it infuriating all these posters that suggest that men don't have to support children if they didn't plan to have them -- that's just rubbish. Most children in the world are unplanned. If you don't want to pay child support you can't have sex, or you have to wear a condom. Sheesh.

OP, I really feel for you - I know you're hoping that, if you cave in to your ex's pressure, he will play a greater role in your DS's life. Alas - I hate to put it so bluntly, but he hasn't shown an interest in the previous 8yrs and I very much doubt that he will now. Your ex is using subtle (and not so subtle) blackmail to try and get himself out of paying what he owes for HIS son. Not to mention the fact your ex didn't pay anything until the CSA chased him and then he subsequently lied to avoid paying the full amount he should. The man cannot be trusted to have your DS's best interests at heart!

I am with everyone else on this and I think you should keep the arrangement with the CSA.

You must accept the money it's for your son and through the CSA.
I'm going through something similar with a dickhead who thinks £200 a month when he earns £200k is acceptable and if he has to pay £201 a month then he will have full custody and do a better job himself despite not laying eyes on the child for 10 years.
You cannot reason with some people which is why the CSA was set up in the first place.

TAKE THE MONEY. Your son will not be a child forever, if he is entitled to it and it will help you, give it to him, give him the things he is entitled to have. Why should his 'father' get away with having the life of riley? believe me it helps and it's only til he's eighteen, his 'father' can then have all his money to himself but your son will have benefitted from having what he is entitled to while he is a child. It really annoys me when women are made to feel guilty about getting what they are entitled to when a man just walks away.

TAKE THE MONEY. Right at the start you decided to have the baby. He was part of that decision and should be obliged to contribute towards the living costs of your joint son. He has avoided the hard work of being involved why shoudl he avoid his financial obligations. No need to feel guilty he shoudl be doing this on behalf of both you and his son.