Any solutions to this maintainance argument with my ex?

[user1466355845]

Hi, I am a male 54 years old, been divorced from my ex for 12 years, separated for 19 years. Two children 21 (just graduated) and 18 Just finishing A levels. Technically my maintenance of £625 (voluntarily and more the CSA level) ends in October because my daughter has finished her A levels but wont be going to Uni till Sept '17. She has a job and is working part time but earns net £500. My son graduates then will be out of work (so can claim JSA) until he goes on an internment in China from October.

The problem is my ex simply cant afford to live without my maintenance and is piling emotional pressure on me to continue - she is genuinely worried and upset and I have been trying to help her by talking, advising on actions etc but she doesn't seem to be prepared to make changes to help the position. She has not met anyone since we split 19 years ago, has a part time job with O/T 30 hours and is very worried about her position especially working tax credit and child maintenance ending. I can see her huge income loss and genuinely feel sorry and guilty that I was responsible for a lot of this (I left).

My side is I remarried 7 years ago but have made sacrifices financially, I have a mortgage but can only afford to pay interest only, have credit card debt and have been sort of looking forward to being "maintenance free" and getting my finances back in order. My wife works part time only.

I have suggested to my ex that she can save money by repayment plans with her credit cards, she is paying way over what she can afford, finding a full time job and also perhaps switching to interest only mortgage for a year or so (over £200K equity in house). She cant get access to equity that isn't an option.

I feel helpless and stuck without a solution here, my wife is keen to ensure I don't pay more maintenance (understandably) but I will have to pay some to avoid my ex and children being unable to survive, but how long will this go on for? Am I being unreasonable? Why cant she find the drive and courage to become financially detached from me or at least not totally dependent. I am very worried and guilty over wrecking her life (she likes to play this card a bit) but simply cant afford to continue spending on maintenance at the £625 level a month nor have this go beyond another 6 months or so. I need to pay my mortgage or I am out in 10 years!.

Mums, Wives, ex wives and step mums - any suggestions?

Thanks

R

They're teenagers! Why couldn't she work full time? I see no reason why not. And even if she couldn't, now they've left school why can't she?

Even if you accept the fact that when they were little she needed to stay at home (nice work if you can get it, as a LP), that was years ago!

She has been a financial dimwit, which is why she's now desperate for the Op to continue the gravy train.

Egosum I DO work full time, as a LP with no support.

And my children are a darn sight younger.

It's not a question of "want to", it's a question of "have to"

If you had children at secondary school and there was just you in the house with no support, would you want to work full time?
Because I would have 2 people who were fully capable of helping with housework and cooking, and would be very conscious that the gravy train would be coming to a halt in a few years?

I can't think of any reason why having one older teen and one university aged child has been a barrier to full time hours for the last few years...

Bemused at the comments about him leaving her , nobody knows the situation and that's irrelevant

I agree

Your duty is to your children, OP, not, in this case, to your ex. If she had been a SAHM for thirty years, ironing your shirts and throwing dinner parties to advance your career, you would have a life-long duty to her, IMHO, but not under these circumstances.

At least with teenagers they can entertain themselves after school for a couple of hours, make their dinner and get themselves to bed.... They don't need you there supervising from 3.30pm.

I'm not really on board with the rhetoric that EW can't possibly be lazy because she's raised the kids. I'm a lone parent myself and it's perfectly possible for me to be lazy.

Not that that's really the point. She can be as lazy as she pleases providing she doesn't expect her ex to fund her lifestyle. If the money is genuinely still for the kids' benefits rather than hers, what she's asking isn't ludicrous.

You can't bemoan "poor me" on the one hand and only work part time on the other. The two things simply don't go together.

Even if the OP continues to pay, the exW should be doing everything she can to ensure that she is in good financial shape,

If the EW has £200k equity and the OP doesn't, that doesn't sound terribly unfair even if he has had better earning potential. In some parts of the country, houses 'earn' more than their owners!

OP. Suppose you go to mediation? Sounds like you need an independent third party. Get an agreement drawn up and stick to it.

Support your DC directly in whatever way you find reasonable and affordable. I know in my 20s I needed a listening ear and help with stuff like tax returns, choosing a car, job applications etc as much as cash.

The 'children' in this case are adults. It's not like she's juggling childcare and having to take days off to deal with chicken pox. Give her notice them continue to support your children.

Well, I don't know about you, but although I have always worked, my restriction was childcare providers, which opened too late and closed to early to allow me to commute. By the time DS got to his teens, my opportunities to salvage my professional (high paying) career were practically nil.

I have worked bloody hard for years, and still do. but my career is far from progressing as fast as before, much of it may be due to not having recent related experience for senior positions, and being overqualified for entry level positions.

The effects are the same, I can assure you that I will ensure DS is packed to Uni ready for the moment TC and CM ends, that day I will move to a bed sit and rent my house to generate some income to support DS loans are never enough these days even when students work) and myself.

Kitchen

Why didn't his ex want to work FT? Why is the pertinent question here.

If OP didn't offer to change his hours/job/career to make work for both of them a level playing field so they could both equally contribute to the upbringing of their children then I cannot see how it is fair that she should foot the bill for childcare, sort out emergency childcare issues etc and find an employer that is flexible enough to do so.

ItMs not just an issue of financial support.

At least with teenagers they can entertain themselves after school for a couple of hours, make their dinner and get themselves to bed.

They've only been that age for a few short years. She's been doing all the day to day stuff up till then which is very limiting as far as career advancement goes.

Once they hit 15 or so she'd have been out of the game for a long time and retraining in a new career at around 50 with no financial support is no small thing.

I don't think it's as easy as saying 'she's lazy.'

And what about all the years when (if) the majority of the childcare fell to the mother, kitchen?

A parent with the majority of the childcaring responsibilities frequently experiences more obstacles to entry into the workforce, whilst the parent with the fewer caring hours enjoys the status of 'parent' and the ability to more free hours and less unexpected responsibilities to pursue a financially rewarding career with far less employee prejudice, broadly speaking.

Part of the wage gap that still exists between the genders is because so many women are expected to fit their work around their children's needs and the work 'needs' of their children's fathers.

After years of doing that you don't often get to just magically make up the shortfall in hours and opportunities caused by the imbalance in caring responsibilities so often expected to be met by the mother by jumping into a well paying job.

I don't think arguments about shared care are relevant here. They split nearly 20 years ago when this was practically unheard of.

I'll ask a different way, were you ther to share all of the school holidays, school pick ups, school sick days etc so that she could have an equal chance in the work place as you? Or were you an every other weekend dad? I do not consider £600 or so living off of someone else, when you had children together you made a joint responsiblity. I don't disagree that maintenance has to stop at some point but what I do disagree with is labelling someone lazy when they brought up your children whilst I suspect you had the opportunity to earn more, you say it's only been high in the last 10 years, your youngest would have been eight, high earners tend to work long hours, did your ex wife get that chance? Or was she lazily bringing up your children whilst you got that chance?

Re post at 19.35:

So you have room in your home for step DC, who is 28, but not for your own much younger DD? Pretty shitty.

It's completely relevant.

Whether it was unheard of or not doesn't change the fact that if the majority of caring fell to the mother it will have made her earning opportunities less favourable than his.

In this particular instance she seems to be in the lucky position of having decent equity in her house and I would be capitalising on that if it were me.

There is a wider discussion here though regarding inequalities in child rearing duties between separated couples and the expectation that the parent with the kind share f those duties is also expected in many cases to lump for being financially worse off in later life because of that inequality.

I've worked ft since my eldest DC was 7 months old. He's now almost 18, my other DC is 15. I've been a single parent for 8 years. No childcare for most of that time (once each DC got to 11 they stopped going to CMs), they have occasionally spent a week or so at Ex's parents in the holidays but that's it. I don't have any family so no help there. My DC have had to be pretty independent and self sufficient (as I was leaving for work at 7.30 and getting back at 6.30/7 for years) but that's no bad thing. They can vacuum, clean, change beds, cook basic meals, wash up. No reason at all not to work ft whilst children are in secondary school. That's 7 years OPs Ex has had to have increased her hours. And it could be more, did she have family who could have done childcare?

I think she's had 18 years to make a plan. Making yourself entirely reliant on maintenance and tax credits is not a plan.

I don't get a penny from my Ex. He has no income on paper. It's fine because I can support the DC (neither of whom are going to uni as they don't see the point of accruing £30k in debt) and they understand why I don't get anything from him.

I've worked ft since my eldest DC was 7 months old. He's now almost 18, my other DC is 15. I've been a single parent for 8 years. No childcare for most of that time (once each DC got to 11 they stopped going to CMs), they have occasionally spent a week or so at Ex's parents in the holidays but that's it. I don't have any family so no help there. My DC have had to be pretty independent and self sufficient (as I was leaving for work at 7.30 and getting back at 6.30/7 for years) but that's no bad thing. They can vacuum, clean, change beds, cook basic meals, wash up. No reason at all not to work ft whilst children are in secondary school. That's 7 years OPs Ex has had to have increased her hours. And it could be more, did she have family who could have done childcare?

I think she's had 18 years to make a plan. Making yourself entirely reliant on maintenance and tax credits is not a plan.

I don't get a penny from my Ex. He has no income on paper. It's fine because I can support the DC (neither of whom are going to uni as they don't see the point of accruing £30k in debt) and they understand why I don't get anything from him

Oops, apologies for double post

I'm not sure if I understand the arguments about shared care.

Presumably, if the OP had had 50:50 custody (which is undoubtedly the "fairest" arrangements for the parents, though it may not always be best for the DC), he wouldn't need to have paid maintenance at all, would he? He'd have paid for the DC during his half of the week whereas the mother would have paid for them the other half.

My understanding is that he paid maintenance because he didn't have 50:50 custody. The mum also got claimed any child benefit and tax credits for the children. Would it be usual to expect the father in these circumstances to fork out for half of the childcare costs on top of the maintenance that he paid? I had sort of assumed that his half of the childcare costs would be taken out of the maintenance payments.

Give her a date and stop paying her from that moment.

All this, he should keep paying because they are living in their mother's house business... if she went to work full-time and asked for a small contribution from the kids to help cover their food and other expenses she should be able to make up the money he paid when they were children. Why shouldn't the 18 year old make a contribution if working full-time? She shouldn't really be hurting for money if they do that.

Even if she didn't want to work full-time when they were still in school, it isn't a big surprise that this was coming. She could have been working this last year on making sure she had a full-time job to start when her youngest left school.