To question affordability of DSS school trip

[Sessy19]

My OH was told by his ExW that he needed to pay £700 towards DSS school skiing holiday next year. He is giving ExW £100 pm to do so.

He told he’d arranged this as a done deal, no discussion, when I asked him about where we might be taking DSS and DSD on our family holiday this year. He can’t afford both!

Additionally, I pay 3/4 of all household expenses since OH has such a huge CM AND Spousal maintenance commitment every month.

AIBU to be annoyed that a) if he can afford £100 extra a month for DSS holidays, it should be contributing to the family household bills, and b) that DSS gets a fancy skiing holiday at the cost of our cheap but quality family holiday this summer!

I think he’s being a total dick about it. And I’m not best pleased that the ExW is the one who decided for him, but he should also have told her to ram it!

I think you are under estimating cost of skiing for yourselves as a family? Ski passes & equipment hire can be quite pricey and then flights / food & tuition on top of accommodation.

I got spousal maintenance for 5 years after my divorce. It was much less than the child maintenance and was due to the disparity between my earnings and his. We’d been married 16 years. My DS2 has SN and I’d been the one to give up work to look after him. I hadn’t worked for 10 years. I work full time now, term time only but still earn 5 x less than my exH.

My DS1 is at university and my exH’s earnings are not taken into account by SLC. It’s all based on my earnings and not on CM either. I’m the resident parent, got child benefit etc.

My exH goes half on school trips. The reasoning is that had we still been together we could have paid for these experiences. I can’t afford them on my own. ExH wouldn’t want his DC to miss out because he divorced me. He didn’t divorce his kids!

I think before everyone jumps on the spousal maintenance, they’d need to be aware of the full agreement.
The latest post mentions him ring fencing his pension - which is likely to be better than most as he’s public sector. (no, not all gold plated - but often very good)
Nothing has been said about houses or other assets, but pensions are usually a valuable asset.

People are also jumping on the 2 year marriage... but there are 2 children, so I’m guessing a period of cohabitation before marriage - probably with both children born during it. So don’t assume that a short marriage doesn’t mean this woman didn’t limit her earning potential by doing the majority of the childcare whilst he increased his earning potential.

I don’t disagree that SM is unusual! And I totally agree he should have discussed this ski trip with you. But I hate to see people jumping up and down about fair settlements when they don’t know anything about the full situation.

I don’t think the XW is wrong to expect him to pay half, and I don’t see an issue with her increasing the cost to include genuine additional expenses. But she’s wrong to book it without agreeing it with him.

I think the bigger issue is your husband not paying his way with you, and arguing with you over this.

Spousal maintenance after a 2 year marriage sounds very unusual to protect a pension. You don’t need good legal representation to sort that out. Then or now. If the children are old enough to ski, then the mother is able to work. As a paid employee. Spend the £700 going back to court.

Basically he can’t afford to live on this arrangement, which would involve paying half the household bills and rent. So really it’s just a matter of you covering his financial arse to he can play the big man and pay spousal maintenance. To protect his pension.

Do you have a good pension and would it be better if you weren’t subsidising him ? Cause you won’t get spousal when you split.

I don’t understand what the OP is saying about the XW adjusting SM when she wants more money. Surely the order is fixed?

Sorry, I called him your husband, just checked - he’s not.
You need to seriously think about how long you’re prepared to personally subsidise his not bothering to sort things out properly and fairly.

What do you mean by technically you own more of the house? Is that legally!

My DS went skiing with school this year. All skiwear from Mountain Warehouse came to £80 in total as they have constant sales on and that included everything (goggles, salopettes, jacket, socks, gloves, sunscreen, lipscreen) DS took €120 spending money and only spent €20 which was to buy food on the 24 hour coach trip. £400 extra is daft - ExW is trying to make a bit of money for herself

@Joebloggswazere it's the household income of the household the children are resident in that is taken into consideration for student finance - in this case it'll be their mothers household income not OP's

OP whilst it's admirable that he contributes so much to his children's expenses - I have an ex that wouldn't give his kids a bottle of his piss if they were on fire - this shouldn't be at the expense of your household.

I'd contact the school & ask for full details of the ski trip then make arrangements to pay any contributions directly to them.

He also needs to have the spousal maintenance looked at & I say that as someone who gets SM after a similarly short marriage, because he clearly cannot afford it if he cannot cover his basic living expenses.

Just to put that SM in context.
Let’s say the youngest was 8 when they divorced. (based on the older being secondary aged if they’re going on a ski trip and 2 kids often being a couple of years apart)

10 years at £300 a month is £36,000.
And if the £300 is fixed, then £300 in 10 years time will be eroded by inflation - so that’s not even £36,000 as we would see it today.

If he has a good public sector pension with a reasonable number of years in it, given the last few years of high CETVs due to the gilt markets, actually £36,000 could be a very fair trade off.

No axe to grind, I’m divorced and don’t even collect on the CM I’m owed as I don’t need it. So I don’t believe in screwing every penny,

I just get frustrated on here with the number of women who seem angry with other women for getting fair settlements, just because some men wriggle out of anything.

It may be unfair - but he had and has the opportunity to challenge it. And just maybe - it isn’t unfair at all.

We know this man is happy to live off you OP, and then doesn’t listen to you without arguing now when you have a valid issue. Just maybe this woman had enough of similar behaviour and she has learned the best way to deal with his shit is to say “ski trip, £700”.

Of spousal maintenance was awarded, they must have been together for quite some time before getting married.

Personally, I think these expensive school holidays are a complete farce. They are so much more expensive than family holidays for the same length of time because of the cost of insurance.

When the ski trip (and NY) came up, I discussed it with my kids, I explained why it cost a fortune and why it would be nice for us to enjoy such a fun holiday together instead and they agreed.

So I get that you are annoyed on principle but ultimately if both parents think it's a good thing, then it wouldn't be right for them to say no because you don't agree.

I'm terms of finances, you agreed to what both are paying towards mortgage and bills so it's not fair to be annoyed now. If he is using his full disposable income to pay for it, that is his choice.

I think most families would have to tighten their belts to afford this. Many families with parents together will be missing holidays to afford it and it will be impacting their lives, I do think that you should be included in the decision but I get the impression that you wouldn’t have agreed to it impacting you. I clearly remember these sort of decision being made in my home when I was growing up.

Teenagers are more expensive than younger children, I have 3 older siblings and remember seething at the expensive of the things they were allowed but my turn came and I got help when l was older. (Apart from the ski trip as it coincided with my dad losing his job - I may have handled that like a spoilt little madam which I am now mortified about)

I can’t include many details about the circumstances as they could be very outing. But the length of their cohabitation and marriage has absolutely no bearing on the amount of SM he pays I’m afraid. They were together for 4yrs total. The law has changed considerably in terms of precedent for spousal maintenance, and this would now be very expensive to counter. XW’s employee is a successful family lawyer and she was very well looked after. OH was, sadly, a fucking baffoon at that time, and clearly, still is. But I love him and his children.

I was blissfully unaware of finances when we got together and fell in love. One doesn’t really get into that in the early days. More fool me, so it starts.

Thanks for the support and otherwise, I guess there isn’t much to say other than to suck it up. Standard for the second wide, eh 😝😉

Having a top lawyer helps but diesnt do miracles. The fact you say there are circumstances that would be outing indicates that they were special circumstances so there was probably a good reason for that decision especially since your oh doesn't seem as outraged about it as you are.

The question is whether he indeed ends up with more disposable income than you after all the bills are paid or whether he is opting to spend it on his kids when you spends yours on things for you.

It costs £240 to apply to vary a maintenance order, which can be reviewed if either of their circumstances have changed.
Given that when they split up his daughter was very very young and is now school age, it’s worth finding out whether that change is significant enough.

Your boyfriend remains a buffoon if he can’t even be bothered to look at that - and you’re enabling him by paying his way for him.

Top lawyers are surprisingly capable of outplaying the young and naive. There are many MANY cases of expensive lawyers doing the most unjust things. So that’s not true. No special circumstances. Just old fashioned legal framework being exploited. ExW didn’t work. Still doesn’t really.

Why are you with him?

My OH was the victim of physical abuse and the scars run deep. He wants to maintain a relationship with his children and this IS at my expense. I have made my bed, I do see that.

You choose to live with someone who has children. I expect that his payments for the children will continue to increase over the years.
I went on my first ski holiday a couple of years ago. I wore my existing waterproof jacket, borrowed some insulated trousers & hired ski boots & skis.
Legally you probably own the property 50/50 even if one of you pays slightly more, unless you have protected an initial investment eg deposit

He sounds a bit hopeless tbh. I'm not seeing the attraction.

I am sorry to hear that he was abused.
The court will look only at the fund just situation though. They split up when the children were VERY young - if they were only together for 4 years, then one was probably under 1. So a baby and a newborn. If she had the majority of the residency then it was her earnings, earning potential and pension long term that suffered. £36,000 eroded by inflation over 18 years isn’t a huge amount of compensation for that.
The CM is irrelevant as it’s the cost of bringing up children which she is doing primarily, and not him.
The relationship may be short, but the childhoods are longer.

*financial situation

I’m not contacting his spousal maintenance. He views that as due payment towards the raising of his children. £500 child support is hardly much of a contribution towards a 13 and a 9yo, so all this spouting about spousal is kind of null. But I do think the title ‘spousal’ is a bit laughable.

Contesting*

12yo*