AIBU in wanting the end of the meal ticket for life in this particular instance (or in finishing off all the DC's mini sugared doughnuts)?

[Artemisia48]

I find myself writing this post in the middle of the night because I cannot sleep and I am hoping that some MN's feedback will bring me some moral support -and writing this post will help me back to sleep -that and the doughnuts plus the large glass of Chardo no no no cup of organic herbal tea. Please bear with me if you can as I am gathering all the facts. I divorced the father of my 2 teenage sons 5 years ago very amicably no court involved and we have a great relationship, co parenting together. I am happily remarried with someone who also has 2 teenage children but went through a very bitter divorce court case. His ex doesn't work, is 8 years younger than us, got a very generous settlement (keeping the whole house mortgage free estimated at 1.8 mil.plus a lump sum so circa 2mil and a personal yearly maintenance until she is 65). Not mentioning children's maintenance because this is just normal. It left my DH quite worse off. At the time she was the RP looking after their 2 children (14 & 16) living next to their school in Kent whereas we are based in London; suffice to say, her attitude was always less than amicable and she never facilitated the children' visits. This year 2 things happened: In January my DH's son (16) chose to come and live with us, and in June his DD just left to go to Canada (Uni). We sold our previous property (which I loved) in January to move to another house closer to transport to facilitate my DH' s son's commute and had to take quite a large mortgage as we needed space for the 3 children who live with us for now most of the time. My ex husband and I both contribute equally to a joint budget for our sons but no one is giving the other any maintenance. I am about to start a new job after 3 years of free lancing because we need to pay off the mortgage and my eldest will start Uni next year. And the last straw came today, I have just learned that my DH's ex has now taken up golf and some unpaid local volunteering to fill up her days. My jaws just hit the floor... Surely now is the time for her to self fund whichever lifestyle she has chosen with the assets she was given and stop rely/ weigh on us? We work full time, look after our children and are happy to provide for them, moved house to accommodate the change of circumstances and still pay her the equivalent of a considerable salary (pre tax = my last full time salary approx £50.000). Surely this defies any kind of logic? Aer we still in the 50s or in 2016? In real terms she has become a millionaire when she got divorced and all she needs to do if she doesn't want to work is sell her 5.000 ft house, buy another (still very nice) one and live off her money?? AIBU in finding this meal ticket totally unfair in our circumstances? (Insert angry face). Thanks in advance for your replies.

Notwhatiexpected.

Also, "my ex wife" - Are you mansplaining on mumsnet?

Asking a question is now mansplaining?? Do you even know what that means? as the way you have used it on this thread would tend to suggest otherwise. Mansplaining and being a man are not the same thing (unless you are particularly militant)

As for your sarcastic biscuit comment, I cannot be the only employer in the country who values the qualities a back to work SAHM brings to the company over and above a feckless youth

I think people jump to alot of conclusions e.g. it was a joint decision that ex was a SAHM. I know couples where the husband is unhappy that his wife has decided to give up work but the wife won't hear of getting a job. That he has succeeded because she was a SAHM I know a couple where she didn't work, had a fulltime nanny until the children went to boarding school. Wouldn't have really made much difference to him that she was at home doing her hobbies.

Maybe she desperately wanted to continue with her "career" if she had one or maybe she became a SAHM against her husbands wishes. Maybe he benefitted from her being at home and maybe he didn't. The point is we don't know.

Either way circumstances have changed, she is younger than the OP and the OP has just got a new job so I can't see why the ex can't go back to work and pay maintenance for her child.

Yes, I do understand and recognise mansplaining. I also recognise the trolling by a chap wanting to generate a sympathetic echo chamber.

My position is, we don't know the full story, I suspect the OP doesn't, she has only been with him for two years, and there looks like there might be a few red flags. Perhaps in time she might be more sympathetic to the first wife's position.

But sympathy or no, that's a moot point. A full time stay at home parent, of either sex, is an equal partner to their working spouse. And it is bloody marvellous that the law recognises that.

Ps, you might want to check your company recruitment policies against the age discrimination legislatuon. "Feckless youth!"

Spousal maintenance these days are rare. There will be reasons for this that either the OP does not know, or is not telling us.

So reasons tend to be that the spouse has contributed a lot of work to a business, and so is being paid for their contribution.

Exactly. A court found that she was entitled to this, and they got the whole story.
PP's have been frankly downright bitchy and misogynistic, based on the biased ramblings of the money grabbing 2nd wife, because they think they know better.
Sad really.

I don't think spousal maintenance is rare at all. Many women and 2 men I know receive it.

Most of them appear to have not gone down the clean break route. Perhaps if there is no lump sum to transfer or if they owned the marital home. Opting instead for higher monthly payments.

Mmmm...

Other posters are apparently 'bitchy and antagonistic' in the same breath as describing OP as a 'money grabbing second wife' !!!

So just to get all the facts right in case anyone is still interested and also to stop the "nasty bitter money grabbing second wife" cliche which is actually so incredibly wrong and offensive:

• no, his ex didn't have any real earning potential actually, she was a PA and wasn't remotely interested in her career
• yes the SAH situation did benefit his career for the first 5 years of their married life when they were abroad. They then relocated to the UK where they stayed so a stable situation and nope she wasnt interested in going back to work once the children got older - the 2 children attended a private school for 6 days a week and she had help . She also enjoyed a very high spending power so she did already benefit from his earnings power for 15 years which is already quite nice and quite fair I should think?
• the split of assets 50/50 in the divorce was right & fair and none of my business indeed. He got to keep his inheritance / family money he had before marriage and she got to keep the whole house unmortgaged, plus a lump sum - and of course the maintenance for the children which was/is just normal. But the spousal maintenance? For what exactly now? eldewt daughter gone and son with us most of the time? If she doesn't want to work just sell the house, buy a very nice but smaller one- not with 5 bedrooms 4 baths 3 receptions 5000ft- and live off her assets.
• finally for the record, someone explains to me the whole SAH situation enabling one persons career in our generation?? There are exceptions of course but in most cases surely both parents (like me and the father of my boys) can have a career if they want to and a family if they are organised (as we were). What is this myth that one has to "sacrifice " their professional life for the greater good of the family? I find this so shocking really. We had live in au pairs and worked very hard and still looked after our children with their father and no my children's weren't traumatised. And in my present husbands case, he was not an absent father event if he was travelling and less present on a day to day basis but very much still in his children's life for christs sake. This is all so biased, dated and cliche... Whenever possible (and in their case it was), both parents should share all their duties, providing financially for their children, educating them and caring for them. Both parents. Yes all assets should be equally divided but nope a parent should not receive a sort of salary - my ex husband isn't paying for me because I "gave him 2 children" nor am I paying him and yes we do share all the expenses for our sons. So where exactly do I become a money grabbing second wife I do not know really. The only thing I am writing about here is the spousal maintenance and I can't understand why we are paying it when the ex wife got more than enough in the share of assets to fund her idle lifestyle. Fine by me if she doesn't want to work but just don't ask for a salary from us. That's all. And that makes me, the effort making, money contributing, children caring second wife a jealous bitch? Wow...
• lastly, her son is now happier living with us largely because he can't stand his own mums attitude towards money. And we have made the necessary adjustments in our life because we care about him, and I am, contrary to what it seems, a nice step mum. I /we want him to carry on attending the school he likes and I can take all the changes provided this unfair spousal maintenace stops. That is all I am asking for. And we are going back to court on these grounds.

Good for you OP, though I will still have to think of you as evil step mum it's the MN rules

The idea that the first wife in this case is a downtrodden saint is completely ludicrous.

It's interesting. In theory I could be in the first wife's position. As the wife of a military officer, we moved overseas, moved back, he travelled a lot. Whether you like it or not, or think that a realistic solution is to get an au pair because it's the twenty first century, there are still families that believe that the way to raise children in a loving environment that minimizes the effects of sometimes absent parents is for the other parent to stay at home and raise them. And that is notwithstanding the very obvious point that if you are moving your family overseas to allow one partner's career to flourish, then it tends to fuck the other one's career somewhat.

If dh divorced me today, leaving me with three teenagers, you can bet your bottom dollar that I would have absolutely no problem with instructing my solicitor to take into account the way my career options had been limited due to our decision to support dh's career over mine, our decision to have three children that kept me out of the workforce, his travels, our travels as a family, and request that a monetary adjudication be made that takes into account that even in 2016 it would be incredibly naive and factually incorrect to assume that women are not disadvantaged by their role as mothers and wives in the vast majority of cases.

In case you were interested, we had exactly the same job before we got married. I am appalled by your attitude. She was his wife and remains the mother of his children, and those two facts will have affected every single aspect of their joint decision for her not to work. What you think is not relevant.

I work in a company where I've come across several of the "trailing spouse" species. 5 years she had of that. Do you have any idea how hard it is to work in a foreign country where you might not speak the language - and might not even have a work permit? Oh and as a couple you may have decided a SAHP is especially important because of the big disruption to the kids?

Our trailing spouses can struggle to find work themselves because of language issues, work permits, local companies wanting to employ only locals, difficult childcare (it's common in some countries to be expected to take your child home for lunch), confidence issues abroad, reluctance to employ people who are going to get yanked over to another posting with their husband soon enough... Add to that, the same issue in the UK: I could work but it would cost us more in childcare.

Do not underestimate how him moving them abroad put a 5 year hole in her potential earning and developing years! (then thr difficulty of finding work in the UK after the gap... etc)

It does sound like she got a lot.
But it's unfair to say why should she have spousal when one child is at uni, and one moving in with you. That is not what spousal is for.

You also say upthread it was a 50:50 split. But now you say he was allowed to ring fence some family money and an inheritance. So it wasn't 50:50.

You haven't said whether that 50:50 means that she got 50% of the value of the pension in the amount of house / lumpsum. Or do you mean that 50% of his pension was taken via PSO and put in her name, as a pension?

If the latter, then sounds like she got a good (though not necessarily unfair to him) deal.

If the former and this £1.8m house and spousal maintenance is her pension, then it's really not such an amazing deal.

Bottom line for me: whether you and he agree with the way the court looks at settlement, it was a fact when he got married. In fact, divorce settlements some say here has become less favourable. So, when he chose to marry and have kids, he knew what he was getting into.

I'm about to go into a second marriage. Neither of us thinks 50/50 is fair in our circumstances. So we have agreed to see a solicitor about a pre-nup.

Your husband went into a contract knowing the terms of it. With all his wordky goods he her endowed. If I were him, yeah I'd be pissed off! But... It's not unfair, he chose this.

Sounds like a court is going to decide on whether she has a point or not, so we shall see!

I think it's completely fair enough that she got half of all of the assets. But I don't really see why she should get a 50k salary every year so she never has to work again.

I think it would be reasonable for her to get some spousal maintenance for a period of time to allow her to retrain but I think it's ridiculous to claim - as some have here - that it is literally impossible for her to find work now. She could totally have got a degree by now and started supporting herself. In this day and age how many women have babies and never ever work again? If they'd stayed married, she probably would have gone back to work at some point so why does she get to live a life of leisure just because they're divorced?

And to those who keep banging on about pension, the OP specifically said in one of her earlier posts:

He did more than his financial duty by paying everything he could/can for his children and split all the assets including pension absolutely 50/50.

" those two facts will have affected every single aspect of their joint decision for her not to work" but what is it wasn't a joint decision? Maybe he desperately wanted to not have all the responsibility of providing for her and the children, maybe he would have loved her to go to work so he could cut back and have more time with his kids and he didn't get that and now he is being punished for her getting her own way?

Tricky isn't it? I do see ex wife may be unable to earn a good whack if she tried to look for a job, as she has not worked for so long. However, I can't see that it's right that a man has the duty to pay what is basically a wage to his ex wife until she reaches retirement age.

We have a neighbour who works long hours in a job he hates and will have to do so for the foreseeable future to make ends meet for his family. His wife has never worked. The children are in their twenties and have left home and he would love his wife to work and contribute financially. She refuses to do so, as she will not leave the dogs alone for a few hours each day. Is it right that he works til retirement and she does not?

When is the court date? This is quite fascinating to me.

. What is this myth that one has to "sacrifice " their professional life for the greater good of the family? I find this so shocking really

Are you really that clueless?

FluffyWuffyFuckYou why is she clueless? Many women find they can have children and a career even if they take a few years off. If you have a look round you will find plenty I'm sure.

Have you considered going to The Jeremy Kyle Show for help?
I am sure Jezzer would give her some home truths. Plus you get a free night in a hotelroom with a mini-bar.

You need to get some sound legal advice on this, I would suggest you try Wikipedia.