I would be really interested to hear people's views and give me an honest opinion about my situation. I split from my ex husband three years ago. We have a son together who is 14. We were together for 16 years and jointly bought our house a year after we met. I initiated the split and ex was quite difficult. Our son decided he wanted to spend half his time with me and half his time at his dad's house. This has worked reasonably well. The actual nights differ though each week, as my ex works shifts. Therefore in terms of actual time, it probably isn't exactly 50/50, for eg, sometimes my ex works weekends...but that's the idea behind it. I just want to give a bit of background about when we split regarding financial matters, to put it into context. My ex, as I said, was quite bitter and reluctantly put our house up for sale. I moved out and rented. He refused to move out, so I did. He made it very difficult for me to take any belongings so I basically moved out with a carrier bag of things, put a deposit down on a house and paid rent. For six months, I also continued to pay half of the mortgage each month on our house because he kept threatening not to pay it. I rented for the next two years until our house sold. He continued to pay the mortgage on our house (which was a similiar amount to my rent). I obviously had to pay out myself to furnish my home as I literally had absolutely nothing. We kept a car each, and he kept his motorbike. We eventually divorced (which we went halves on) and once our house sold, we split the equity 50/50 which enabled us to both put a deposit down to buy a house each. During our marriage his job had enabled him to pay into a generous pension but I relinquished rights to it. He took everything in terms of furniture, belongings, absolutely everything from our marital home. I obviously wasn't over the moon, but he threatened to pull out of the house sale if I didn't agree.
We decided that we would not pay child maintenance as our son would be living with both of us. The only difference is that I have continued to get £80 a month child benefit. I pay monthly for our son's mobile which is £25. I have always gone at the very least, halves on clothes, school trips etc for our son and there have been periods in the last three years where I have certainly paid out far more frequently for our son. I have always bought the majority of school uniform for example. Just recently, our son needed some clothes. His dad eventually bought him some. I have just received a text saying he has spent £150 on clothes recently for our son and that he thinks its one sided. I think he is possibly hinting at the fact that I get child benefit and he does not. I am trying to take a neutral stance. I am imagining that he probably forgot I got it and as its suddenly dawned on him, he will nag me to make sure he knows exactly how I am spending it. Should I have to account for every penny of that every month? I have given the above information just to explain how financially things have been for the past three years. I know to a point that is separate to our son's upbringing, but, for example, I had to completely refurnish our son's room, etc and he took everything. Please give me your opinion!