WWYD - children's father wants to be paid officially for "babysitting"?

[silvercuckoo]

Asking on behalf of a friend (genuinely), and with her permission, I praised mumsnet collective wisdom to her . We discussed this topic yesterday in a small circle of friends after she asked us for advice, and opinions differed a lot.
She is divorced with three children (two in primary school, one pre-school). The children's father is an every second weekend dad with a relatively common story (arrrrrgh, she's such a bad/unstable mum, I'll petition for 100% custody. Gave her a lot of hard time, and then suddenly lost interest).
Her childcare arrangements have suddenly collapsed and there appeared to be a two-three week gap in the arrangements (a new nanny, about to start in late August, had a personal emergency and had to delay her start for three weeks).
The children's father agreed to help and cover these three weeks (he was not employed), collecting the children from school / nursery, bringing them to my friend's place and looking after them until she's home.
The night before his first day, he called her and explained that he expects to be paid a market nanny daily rate to compensate him for inconvenience. It was a massive surprise but she agreed as, realistically, there was no other option. She paid him around £400/week in cash.
Now, the third week of their agreement is coming to an end, and he had demanded formal payslips and evidence that all taxes /NI have been paid (as they would be for a nanny). It is an affordable amount for her (she used to pay, and will pay the same for a permanent nanny) the question is about the principle.
I think this is absolutely outrageous, and that under no circumstances should she entertain this. It is called parenting, not employment.
WWYD?

Surely it's not an employment contract because the mother did not intend to create legal relations? It's more like a temporary maintenance payment arrangement as pp have said.

Anyway, she should tell him no.

Never has my flabber been so gasted.

What a painfully pathetic excuse for a father.

@BlueBug45 I didn't mention anything about gifts, did you mean to quote someone else?

@silvercuckoo glad it was only a minority opinion! It's BS anyway as there was nothing to stop the dad "job hunting" whilst the DC were at nursery/school.

My stbxh also tried that one.

I’m kind of amazed to find another person this has happened to, I thought it was a particularly shameful low of his!

After leaving me and ds when I was struck down with a serious illness, undiagnosed at the time, very scary and deteriorated fast and significantly. So of course the t@@t refused to contribute tuppence and started to stay out all night and screw women... whilst I lost the ability to walk amongst other things, yet still had to go back to work full time and look after a little toddler.

Anyway, he suddenly realized I was giving most of my wages to childcare, and demanded it instead. Did one day and jacked it in. Stole my bank card to take out the max daily amount to ‘pay’ himself the next day. Even though he’d not looked after ds at all, apparently the £300 was for sitting outside on the phone to his dodgy nightclub ‘friends’ smoking all day, and eating food from my kitchen. Danger money for being near us. Or maybe he thought I should pay for his mere presence in the same square mile.

Was married to him for 7years before I got ill by the way. Before he decided that me and his baby were scum.

Even worse, he tried it again when I received a budget for carers, having deteriorated even worse (I wouldn’t have deteriorated so badly had only had to do so much). He tried to take all the money I was receiving for carers!!! He had no intention of actually helping me or his little boy, just felt entitled to the money.

I was so fucking desperate I thought about giving him some money just so he’d stay in his sons life. Luckily I still had some brain cells and came to my senses enough to say ‘show me you can do it for a week and then I’ll pay you’ out of my savings, obviously, not up for fraud & lost my job by that time!.

So upsetting that he couldn’t even see his son even if he was going to get paid for it (by his seriously ill wife). That’s how much he cared.

So that’s the company your friends expartner keeps. The only other man who would do this is a vile abusive wanker, who is so fucking cruel he abandoned his wife and child in the worst way possible.

Omg. Yes what the pp said about billing him for all of the rest of the year.

I think she explains he’s self employed and responsible for own tax. And then on her dc’s birthday every year without fail she sends him an invoice for the years babysitting that she’s done for him 😂

I’d tell him to consider himself self employed and to sort out his own tax. Then I’d bill him for every hour I’d spent with his kids, formally.

& maybe get advice from solicitor? or gingerbread charity?

By the way, she’s on very tricky ground with any declaration he makes of her genuinely paying him either as an employee, or as a self employed contractor. He may end up really landing her in it, even if he doesn’t intend to. She needs to work out a way through this and for goodness sake don’t admit anything in electronic / written form!

HMRC do not allow nanny’s to register as self employed without a very clear reason as to why they have legimitinate different income streams. This is because employers have used this to avoid paying tax in the past, therefore it’s not as simple as telling him that he was self employed and should register.

The onus is on the employer to check the self employment status of anyone claiming to be self employed st the time of engaging for services (not after), and hmrc will refuse to allow someone with a normal type of nanny job (standardized hours, weekly schedule etc) to set themselves up as self employed as they don’t meet the criteria. In this case the employer is liable for all tax! Both the employers Nics and the employees tax even if they said they were paying ‘gross’ not net.

Soo... I don’t think she should be admitting to ANY type of employment agreement between them.

Not as an employee, as she will then have to set him up as an employee, produce playslips, pay his tax and ni, (& pension & student loans of applicable), as well as her own Nics. She would also have to deal with P45s etc, and communicate with hmrc re his employment status so that they can recalculate his benefits (& investigate him for fraud if necessary!).

And, not pretending that she thought her ex had set himself up as self employed, as she would need to have seen his hmrc reg number to proceed, which doesn’t exist so she would be liable for his lack of self employment status... see above!

Meantime he gets to play fast and loose with her and in his simple minded efforts to manipulate the benefits system could utterly screw up things for her!!!

I’d suggest she replies by text/emails (to create a paper trail in case he tries to go to hmrc) in obvious disbelief, exclaiming that she thought he was joking!

Eg. ONG you’re so funny sometimes! Lol, A daddy can’t babysit his own kid can he! That would be ridiculous! After all, I don’t get paid any baby sitting money for all the hours I’ve done since her birth ha ha ha! I gave you the money as a loan out of the kindness of my heart as I know things are tough for you at the moment, and I don’t want to see the father of my child struggling for rent/whatever, and it was lucky I had a bit extra that month. But anyway, don’t worry, I won’t pressure you for you to repay it until you’re back on your feet. Have you got any interviews coming up? DC is looking forwards to seeing you on X-ray, s/he loves spending time with her daddy, good luck, Lovely-Ex-Partner.

Agreed that as short term arrangement with no contract, he is on dodgy ground. Don't pay him for the last week. Tell her to take him to the small Claims court or better still Judge Rinder. He is happy to call useless Fathers

She should total notify HMRC. OK it's a little bit of a pain for her, but I'm sure the ex will be delighted to have to restart his benefit claim and wait 6 weeks for uc payment.

Would serve him right, expecting to be paid to care for his own children.

No intention to enter into a contract - just an informal arrangement between parents - so neither employed nor self-employed? In which case tax and NI don't come into it.

Check this on the employment law part of MN.

@silvercuckoo : match made in heaven you need a nanny someone in your acquaintance has recent experience.

WellThisIsShit
What a SHIT your ex is!! I reread your post a few times in disbelief..💐

OP, read her next post, sounds VERY good advice wise!!!

I'd humiliate him on social media for charging to look after his own children. She should innocently ask him on his fb page if he wanted a bank tansfer or cash in hand for looking after his kids. Hopefully decent people will tear him to strips.

There are some weird laws about the enforcability of contracts between families so I am not even sure being paid to look after your own children could be a valid legal agreement. It's years since I have lived in the UK though so maybe ask in legal? What an asshole!

you need a nanny someone in your acquaintance has recent experience.
Haha... In this particular case I am not sure I am satisfied with references!
She will probably produce payslips and pay all taxes. After long deliberation, she decided that it has additional value as family court evidence, if ex ever re-opens the case (and he has a habit of mentioning "you'll hear from my lawyer" every time the children are not available for the contact for a genuine reason).
Thanks all

After reading WellThisIsShit's post at 16:52 I think the answer is obvious: gaslight him. She should be completely perplexed that he would think it was 'employment' and the money was a gift/loan/travel expenses/to pay for activities/whatever. On no account admit it was employment as it sounds like "he's self employed" isn't valid.

Also, why would he need proof of tax and NI payments? I can't imagine a government agency thinking that a parent looking after their own children for three weeks would be employment and it wouldn't occur to them that payment had occurred. Unless he's on job seeker's allowance or something and would be sanctioned for not being available for work? Surely emergency childcare for three weeks would be ok?

Or as a PP suggested, is it a scam to show that he's recently 'out of work' so will be entitled to benefits of some kind?

So does he need proof of NI etc or is he just toying with her?

I cannot believe she paid him in the first place. It’s one of my pet peeves when fathers say things like ‘oh I can’t come I’m babysitting tonight…’ it’s not babysitting when it’s your own child!!! You wouldn’t catch a mother say she babysits all day everyday would you?!

Its seriously worrying that he is only seeing these children as a ‘payday’ and wouldn’t have looked after them without being paid for it. I would personally question letting the children see him ever again until he makes amends about this. He’s a complete twat !