To be a bit hmmmm about DP asking me to pay for his divorce?

[infinitemonkeys]

I'll try to keep this simple.
DP had been separated a year before we met. After we'd been together a couple of years and were talking about having kids, I made it very clear that he would need to get divorced beforehand.

He dragged his feet, and the divorce was eventually finalised a couple of months after our baby was born this year. He has to pay £1,500 in solicitor fees etc and has just received the invoice.

he has just asked me if I'll give him the money to pay the invoice.

As background: I earn approx 4x more than him, have never asked him to contribute to any household bills (although he tends to get the food shopping and one-off things like vet bills). He received a benefit backpayment of just over a grand last year which related to the house he shared with his exW, which I thought he'd put aside to cover the divorce.

I've asked him why he doesn't have the money to pay this bill and his response was, "money just goes, doesn't it?".

Am I being U to feel a bit peeved and to tell him to pay for his own bloody divorce? I also bought every single thing for our baby and he didn't offer once to buy anything....

Or should I just see it as a family expense and pay up?

Really not sure how to feel about this!

And?

Precisely

is it me ?

She has probably gone to have a reasonable discussion with her do if she has any sens,e do you think she should ROB?

Randy Old Bloke ??

Random Orange Bugger ??

Racy Ornery Bike ?

Gizza clue

Presumably she also had something to do with the conception? As did the OP here. Her DP was well and truly separated from his ex by the time the OP was pregnant, so I don't think that he was married in anything other than name. Talking about married people getting pregnant immediately brings to mind adultery which doesn't appear to be in any way relevant to this thread.

OP I can completely see why paying the divorce bill rankles and that you need to get your finances with your dp onto a more formal footing, but on the other hand it sounds as if you may be relatively comfortably off while your dp is on a much reduced and possibly quite inadequate salary. As a higher earner myself I know that it can lead to real resentment both ways, so it's really worth working out some sort of scheme where you are making equal commitments without your dp being unable to make any savings or buy things for your baby (assuming that he wants to and can't rather than decided not to).

My dh is really bad with money and we have had major issues in the past when he had a bit of a 'what's mine in mine and what's yours is mine too' attitude going on. We found having a joint account didn't work at all, so now we split the bills (I pay mortgage he pays the rest) and have set saving commitments so we have roughly the same amount of spending money without having to keep tabs on each other. The one thing that dh said really helped him to control his spending was getting out a set amount of cash each week and never spending more than that.

Mindmaps appears to have fallen prey to an overactive autocorrect, AF. (OP -> opportunity in previous posts). I'm presuming she means LTB.

it's a bugger, that auto correct

I'm with the you pay for it camp and make your financial arrangements more formal from here on in so it's clearer to both of you how much each is contributing and that it is equitable.

It's a vicious bastard that ducks up all the time:) I mentioned SC as an example of who cares . The op obviously doesn't care that much .

The op says in her 1st post - should I just see it as a family expense - I get the feeling that's how her dp sees it , they just need to establish some boundaries.

"I also bought every single thing for our baby and he didn't offer once to buy anything...."
It seems though that OP's DP's idea of a family expense is that she pays for it. Sigh. Since she also says that "He does his share with the baby and around the house", I'm inclined to view him as more passive than cocklodger. I think at some level he sees their home as 'hers' rather than 'theirs'. And staying in an industry where your income has dropped by 70% - I'm not sure I would! I'd be looking to retrain into a better-paying field. Again, a bit passive. Or very emotionally attached/invested to that industry. Could the income drop have hit his confidence/made him passive?

Just thinking out loud here ...

I always said I wouldn't have dc with do until I got divorced, I did though. Lots of reasons in the becoming why we didn't divorce, I suppose its something I should look into now.

Or he didn't have any spare money? Who knows. I agree I can't imagine having my income sliced like that, it would be terrible.

Why doesn't he earn more? My answer e would depend on whether for example he's a poorly paid worker in the charity sector doing a job from the heart which he is passionate about or a bit of a layabout who can't be bothered to put in more hours at a dead end job who expe st you to pick up the slack. Either way, though, I would expect him to come up with something a little better than "money just goes!".

I think this comment really goes to show that people in the UK have little understanding of how people are really suffering from the global economic crisis. In the country where I live, there are no jobs which you can earn more. It's often the case where employees either choose to take a pay cut or the business will go bust. I suspect this could be what has happened in the OP's case.

Privilege all over the place.

Isn't this scenario usually with the sexes reversed and no one would call the woman whatever the female equivalent of cocklodger is just because bills aren't split 50/50.

Those were examples, nobeer. Yes I do understand about the financial crisis which has left my own husband unemployed but because he's very hardworking and doesn't take advantage I don't mind paying for everything while he tries his best to get a job.. There's another example for you.

Just don't pay the bill. He's had plenty of opportunity to save up to be able to payit, and got £1k lump sum which should have been set aside.

Just don't pay it.

If he's not bothered about the divorce, then it's up to him whether he pays for it or not.

If he couldn't care less either way, then OP has no right to try and make him do something he doesn't want to do when it's going to cost him a huge amount of money that he doesn't have.

If she wants him to have the divorce, she should be prepared to pay for it.

His responsibility. He pays. In installments if necessary. I get why you want to pay all expenses if you earn 4x more,but seriously i think he should be contributing more in the family. I'd ask him where that other money went seeing as you pay for all. Sounds like he knows he's got it cushy and is taking advantage.

You were the one to insist on the divorce so perhaps you should pay!

My exH used to earn a lot less than me, probably from 1/2 to 1/4 too, over the years as I moved up on the payscale.

He still managed to save up and would have found 1000 pounds.
I wonder how this man used to earn that much and doesn't have 1000 pounds saved up.

And wanting your OH to be officially out of a previous relationship is not OTT.
What if he died and she inherited from him?
There are other legal considerations and he should be the one seeking the divorce, not the op having to insist.