To say no to paying DH maintenance bill.

[ivechangedmyusername]

Name changed but been here since before Mexican House thief and the small Korean lady in the Garden ..

DH has 4 dcs. (2 over 18 who now live with us/at Uni
I have 3. (2 over 18)

He paid £1500 a month in CM for 6yrs (as this covered the mortgage and was the divorce agreement. CMS was £918 so more than the minimum by quite a way. ) when ex remarried house was sold and ex retained 80% of the equity in exchange for no pension sharing. (Her share of the equity was £318k). She moved into her new (similarly wealthy , childless, ) husbands house. No mortgage. We know this because she tried (and failed) to move overseas with the dcs and part of the court process was full disclosure of their joint financial situation to prove they could afford to support the move.

My DH has been quite unwell mentally. He suffered from quite extreme stress from his job which whilst highly paid is equally highly stressful and performance based. We have evaluated our lives and decided that we would rather earn less and live longer - and have some more time for each other now the kids are older. He has taken unpaid leave from work which means he hasn't sought a new contract. He hasn't earned for 2 months whilst very unwell and has now decided to retrain in a completely different craft based field that will pay a quarter of what we he was previously earning.

Now to the AIBU . DH has emailed (the only way they can communicate even after a decade without a full scale screaming row. ) and told his ex what is happening and that CM will reduce in August to £325 per month. She has said that this is unacceptable and that his children 'still exist' and he needs to pay for them. He has told her that this is how it is going to be and that his maintenance payments should have reduced years ago when the eldest got to 18 but he didn't do that because he could afford not to. Now he needs to look after his health and this is what he can afford. CMS rate.
I have received an email from her today, the first time in a decade that she has spoken to me, telling me ;
' as you and my ex-husband have made a joint decision on this lifestyle choice, I think it only morally right that I look to you to make up the shortfall in maintenance.'. It is not my children's fault that their father is having some kind of midlife crisis and wants to go and commune with nature. He has children , they are not an optional financial obligation'. As you are supporting this plan, then it is only fair that you pay the shortfall in my children's finances in order to keep them in the lifestyle they are used to'.

For full disclosure, ex wife has not worked since eldest was born. (22yrs ago).
I have worked full time in a profession since 22 and only had a 3 month break after my first and 6 months for both subsequent babies.
My ex and I get on really well and he also pays me £500 pm in CMS for my only child now at home.
Husbands new job will not have a massive impact on our lifestyle except for the better (more time at home) .
AIBU so say no, I'm not paying what you perceive to be a shortfall and sod off and get a job. ?

@Stretchoutandwait

We agreed for me to be a SAHM when we had our 1st child nearly 15 years ago, as we could not afford childcare for 1 and certainly not now we have 3 children.

I have not and will not ever earn as much as my DH earns, but if push came shove I would find work if we needed me too. But I would not be looking a job paying the same as my DH I would be looking for anything.

Just because EXh here has been a high earner doesn't mean he carries the full load of paying for all their children needs and wants.

But if you go to the bare basic then 2 of the 4 children are now over 18 so CM should be at least reduced.

Surely you can see it would be better for the children to have a happy, healthy dad then a dead one which could happen if OP husband continues to work like he has been. Unfortunately life has to change in a major way and it is no ones fault but it is a fact. So everyone has to get on with the new normal and if that means CM is reduced then that has to happen and of EXW doesn't like it then SHE needs for find a way to earn some and not expect OP and husband to carry on carrying her.

So if I am understanding this correctly, it's ok for a man to 100% financially support his children when he is married (i.e. with the SAHP set up), but not once he is divorced. Then the women who may have given up her career to enable the husband's career should just be expected to get a job?

Also if a couple make a joint decision for one to pursue an unhindered career and the other to SAH, then after divorce it's ok for the working parent to have more money and a better lifestyle than the SAHP.

This case is a poor example as the parties involved are clearly very wealthy and ex-wife has now remarried and no longer in need of support, but I still stand by my point that describing the ex-wife as "riding the gravy train for years" is unfair.

If nothing else, some of these comments are just a reminder that no-one should ever give up their career to become financially dependent on their partner.

But I am not saying that maintenance shouldn't be reduced or that the DH should work himself to death. We don't know the full details about this case, but it looks like this now seems reasonable.

I just had a more general point about whether men (or women) do bear some long-term responsibility towards their ex-partners if a joint decision was made to SAH earlier in the marriage. Too many men seem to be able to walk away from marriages with their careers in tact, with lovely children almost grown up, and leaving the ex-wives with very little (we see it time and again on MN). The decision to give up work can have long-term consequences for the SAHP, should it not have the same impact on the working parent?

Clearly, I am the only person with this opinion, so I will walk away and take my unpopular opinions with me :-)

She had a Nanny during the marriage and after. If she wanted to work, she had the childcare to do so, without it effecting what her ex was paying.

It's not the case of having a SAHP because they cant afford the childcare. They could, she didnt want to work.

I agree with the recent previous posters. She will have been disadvantaged career/pension wise being out the work force for years whilst he has reaped the benefits. She must and should be compensated for that.

Yes, in this case, the ex-wife could and should have worked. I'm not disputing that she could have made a lot more effort to support herself and should not expect to be supported forever.

We don't know the full details about his case and I just found some of the comments about the ex-wife a bit nasty.

Also, she was compensated. She had a equity share of 318 in the marital home. That works out 16 years worth of wages, at £20k pa.

How do you know she was compensated? £318K is certainly a lot of money, and on the face it of it the ex-wife looks to have done well out of the marriage. But for all we know the DH could have been earning multiples of that every year. We don't know the full details of this case and we are only getting half the story.

There is no doubt that post-divorce both parties need to contribute financially, but it is absolutely right that the SAHP should be adequately compensated. Using terms like "trophy wife" and "riding the gravy train" just imply that somehow she is not deserving of her share of the money.

At some point she is going have to take responsibility for the choices she made.

She has got 80% of the equity on the shared property to the tune of £318k, she had 16 years of maintence, place the full payment of a nanny to look after the children so she could have worked and got her self in to a position of earning to be self supporting, have her own pension but she has chosen not too.

None of this is either OP or husband fault.

Don't bother answering. If you do just say 'sorry I have theee of my own to support and work to support them and my own household'

@stretchoutandwait she's deserving of her share but her children are adults now.

@stretchoutandwait but in this specific case, the wife was paid £1,500 per month plus she had a paid for nanny (paid by her ex), so she could easily have gone out and built a career for herself has she chosen to.

Her older children live with their father and still her payments were not reduced even tho they should have been.

Plus she had £318 lump sum of money which she could invest into a pension scheme for herself (much higher amount than many of us who have worked for years will have in our pension pot).

She is also remarried and her new husband financially supports her also. Presumably she will be in a financially comfortable position going forward as he also sounds wealthy and she will benefit by her marriage to him.

In this particular case I personally think this woman is really trying it on by trying to force a high maintenance pay out to continue indefinitely by her ex husbands wife?!

In this particular case it does not sound like the ex husband shirked his financial responsibilities towards his children or as Academy matter of fact is ex-wife. He was kind to them by the sounds of things. Which is why his older children have chosen to live with him.

Yes the SAHP often takes a hit to their career but on the flip side the working parent misses out on a substantial amount of time spent with their children compared with the SAHP, plus the stress of the job itself as well as being totally responsible for financing the family. It's never going to be a totally "fair" situation on anyone therefore it is each person's individual responsibility to think through all feasible scenarios before making any decisions regarding childcare vs working.

I also have to question the seemingly automatic assumption that the SAHP gives up some potentially glittering career. I don't have children but have worked in bog standard office jobs all my life because despite trying, I am simply not academic enough or have the personality to cope with a better paid/higher responsibility role. In this particular case the Ex wife had a nanny and there was clearly the money/resources for her to retrain had she wanted to. If like me she wasn't capable of attaining a career as opposed to a job then she's not actually given up on anything other that what she'd have been capable of anyway.

She must and should be compensated for that

Her choice not to work. If he was earning so much then childcare costs would not have been an issue but she chose to stay at home regardless.

She has had 6 years of maintenance not 16. Also the husband has to take some responsibility for the joint decision they made 20+ years ago for her not to work.

Yes, she should absolutely get a job - I am not disputing this. But he has reaped the benefits of a well paid career and should compensate her adequately for enabling this career. I strongly believe that this compensation should not be in absolute terms, i.e. enough to live on, but should be relative to the wealth and lifestyle he has. Based on the facts we have in front of us, it would seem that this is the case and she has done well out of the marriage. I just get the impression that some posters believe she is somehow lucky and spoilt and not deserving of this. For all we know, she was single handedly bringing up four young children whilst he chased his career (we don't know when the nanny started).

I broadly agree with the sentiment that a woman who gives up her career, earning potential and pension contributions to enable a high-earning spouse should be compensated for that in the event of divorce.

But, two things:

1. In this case, it sounds like the exW was compensated for that in the divorce and in fact, in addition to her divorce settlement, the DH has been overpaying child maintenance for as long as they've been separated.

1. The above is all very well, but life does change. Nothing is guaranteed. What if the DH did die? Or got made redundant and couldn't get another job? Or he was diagnosed with an incapacitating disease and could no longer work? The exW is BU to not have ever had a contingency plan in place.

I would like to hear the ex-wife’s perspective on this.

Too often a woman’s contribution is minimised if she has done all the work of childcare/household allowing her partner to pursue his options.

We don’t know the circumstances re the Nanny employed.

The ex wife could be in the process of retraining.

What we have is a very loaded one sided account with a lot of back history. I can imagine the ex-husband is very comfortably off as a consequence of his ex-wife’s efforts.

It sounds as if she is angry to have firstly have picked up the pieces after he had an affair with the OP and now is looking to deal with another impact of choices that don’t benefit her.

@funinthesun18, I actually find your comment very depressing.

How many posters on MN claim that they and their DP made a joint decision for one parent to SAH because they felt it was in their childrens' best interests or because they couldn't work as their DP has such a high powered job that they cannot help with the childcare (and the SAHP felt that paid childcare would not be sufficient to support their return to work) or because they couldn't afford to work. We see it time and time again. Yet after divorce, it is somehow the SAHP's decision not to work.

I am not defending the ex-wife here or suggesting the DH has shirked his responsibilities. Neither do I have any axe to grind (I am the higher earner in my marriage). I am just a little surprised at some of the tone of some of these posts given that we don't know the full story.

@ohreallyohreallyoh

Only applies to men, though, doesn’t it? As a RP, I don’t have the luxury of a mental breakdown, I need to support my children.

Couldn't agree more with this statement.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter how much CM has been paid in the past is that CM will be reduced due to the fact that OP husband will not be able to return to the job he has due to his health issues, but he will still be earning some money so will still pay the correct amount of CM on the money he is earning. And OP is not and never will be responsible for paying the difference.

Nothing else matters. OP husband can not return to the work he was doing or risk making his health worse.

Nothing else matters. OP husband can not return to the work he was doing or risk making his health worse

This exactly, she needs to stop being workshy

*@ohreallyohreallyoh

Only applies to men, though, doesn’t it? As a RP, I don’t have the luxury of a mental breakdown, I need to support my children.*

I read it that the DH has a cardiac condition??

(we don't know the age of the remaining children she has at home).

Yes, we do, it's all in OP's posts. The younger two are 14 and 16, and will most likely be moving in with their dad and OP.

she will never reach the earnings of the DH whose career she has enabled

He paid for a nanny.

Yes as she had a nanny, she could have forged her own career. She chose to live off her first husband instead, and now lives off her second husband. This is clearly not the same as a sahm out of work because of single handedly bringing up 4 kids whilst husband is away on frequent business trips. People are not agreeing with the ex wife in this particular case, it doesn’t extend to other cases at all.