Non resident parents don't like paying child support do they?

[Moomin8]

Or is that just my experience?

My ex husband paid maintenance after we split at the rate suggested by his solicitor. One day he suddenly stopped because he wanted to pay his credit cards off and he also felt he was paying too much. I contacted the CSA (at the time) and he ignored them and ended up doing a deduction of earnings order. And they figured out that he owed more not less. A few years later he had a big pay rise, did not tell them so he managed to under pay me for years.

Now, my baby's dad who I don't live with had said to me before she was born that he'd use the government website to work it out & I said fine.

Then about 2 months ago he suddenly decided to halve it, apparently because he didn't get any commission that month. I've never seen his payslips so I've trusted him to be honest.

I suggested we ask the CMS to calculate it because that's fair and he hit the roof. Has been absolutely vile to me in messages and has now blocked me.

He has not lost his job or been furloughed had recently decided to buy our daughter a £500 number plate for her car which I argued she doesn't actually need right now but she does need clothes and formula etc!

@thequeenbeyondthewall sorry I was replying to someone else! Ignore my previous post.

@maryqueenofscots yes I guess it is, are situation is ridiculously complicated. I am well aware that it's mostly women on the receiving end of this crap.

@chrissiekeller61 fully aware this predominantly impacts women, my husband and I aren't stereotypes either. And no I don't think he's a hero for looking after his own kids and neither does he. Older kids moved here out of choice after years of living at both houses under court order. He paid religiously. Now we and the kids receive nothing. Other mother works, but hides her earnings. CMS are useless, worse than a joke. We have given up as the stress it causes is just not worth the impact on our family. It's a shot situation for anyone to be in.

@Neednewwellies

Good for you. You have a good ones good ex even.

Mine was a good one till our DD arrived. He then turned into a complete cunt.

17 years is a long time to spend with someone to decide to have children. I'm not knocking you. It's great you had that time.

Good for you.

@thequeenbeyondthewall, no, I’ve already acknowledged that clearly from this thread, it was partly luck but I did all I could to be sure. Clearly other women did the same and still their husbands turned out to be bad apples.
Re the 17yrs, we were lucky to meet first week at university. But I gave it a lot of thought and decided I’d rather never be a mother than go ahead with a pregnancy without being sure both of DH and our financial situation. As I said, I was somewhat obsessive about this due to growing up in poverty. We literally didn’t go out for 3yrs despite both earning good money. No cinema or meals out. No holidays or gadgets etc. Every penny needed to be saved and I needed uk be sure he could do this too to believe his priorities were the same as mine. I appreciate people make different choices but I’m still gobsmacked at how many hideous men get laid let alone get married and get to become parents.

...and I’m genuinely sorry that yours turned out to be such a waste of space. I’m sure under the circumstances your DD is much better off with one loving, interested and involved parent than two where one doesn’t give a shit.

I wasn't knocking you @Neednewwellies not at all. I was just trying to say, sometimes no matter how well you know someone it's never enough. Sometimes.

You and your ex , your both clearly reasonable people and have remained so since you split. Which is great.

Not all of us ate fortunate enough to have your life experiences where people act as you expect them to. My ex didn't. He totally threw me with what he did but it is what it is.

There is no rush to have kids. Totally agree. I have one. Had her at 34. Now thinking of adopting as he's had the snip.

Sorry if I have offended you at all.

No, you didn’t offend me at all @thequeenbeyondthewall. I think I’m just always shocked that most men aren’t like my Ex as that’s seemed the reasonable expectation for a father. Yes, we’re still good friends. We’d still be a couple if it was up to him but I felt we’d just become like brother and sister and he does agree with that when he’s honest. The difference is he’d happily stay in a semi platonic marriage whereas I don’t think that’s right. So I guess I didn’t judge too perfectly. The government absolutely needs to support the RP in these cases and put the weight of the law behind ensuring that NRP, usually men, step up and provide for their children. I know I’ve been lucky.

I think a lot of men see it as an affront to have to give their money to their former partner - they don’t see it as supporting the child. So for instance if the child’s mother gets her nails done they immediately say that’s what “his” money has been spent on, and ignore all the childcare/clothes/shoes/food etc.

My child’s father pays but I’m sure it’s only because of vanity because he’d rather be seen to be paying than not. I am not reliant on what he pays me at all, and actually he has been a lot more cooperative since that was the case. When DD was tiny and I was working part time he made out he was doing me a favour. He would never contribute to nursery fees, shoes etc. I now earn a lot more than him and he’s suddenly become very happy to pay maintenance and contribute to other costs too. Knowing him as I do, I think it’s purely so I can’t say I’m single handedly supporting our child!

I do think there should be much more stringent policing of child maintenance, with much more stringent consequences (like in the US where you can go to jail for not paying in some states). The fact that child maintenance is disregarded as income from benefit calculations says it all really - it looks like claimants are getting a brucie bonus but actually it’s an acknowledgement that maintenance is an unreliable source of income. They’ve probably worked out that it’s cheaper to disregard from benefits than it is to arm the CMS with proper enforcement powers.

Well. He's now blocked me and hasn't bothered to come & see dd.

I should add as well that he's 51 years old. So it's not even like he's young.

I'm sorry this has happened to you op.

This is the norm vs decent dads.

Decent dads and mums do not act like this.

However they are In the minority.

Married or not the RP gets fucked over regardless as there are no repercussions if the NRP decides
Not to pay. No government body does anything to rectify that. No laws in place either to stop it happening.

Just a general slagging off of single mums. Can't work because the child care cost outweighs the

Who provide everything for the DC regardless.

Makes me sick.

But the NRP just gets off, does what they want,
Never answerable to anything.

He's good at rewriting history. Nothing ever happened the way it actually did.

Same predictable pattern and he is now ringing me over and over.

This happens all the time. I just don't know how to get out of it.

For now block his number.

What do you actually want to achieve?

@MarieQueenofScots

The figure of nrp mother’s is not “vanishingly small”, why would you assume that?
My DSS lives with us and his mother refuses to pay maintenance.

In fact, figures from the ONS, unfortunately the latest are from 2013 so not that recent, but likely to still be similar, if not more:
“400,000 families were headed by lone fathers in 2012, representing 13.5% of all single-parent households in the UK according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). With an average family size of 2.32, that figure represents 927,000 people in the UK.”

I have no idea.

He will want to see our daughter but because she's a small baby she can't go and stay at his house yet.

The figure of nrp mother’s is not “vanishingly small”, why would you assume that?

Because the current stats for single parent families headed up by woman is more than 9/10...

It isn't an assumption, it is fact. HTH

Him having contact with the bay is completely separate to him having to pay maintenance.

If you are happy for him to come to your home to have contact you ca offer that - I suggest a proposal that is fair, reasonable and works for you and make it in writing to him.

Pursue the maintenance from CMS because it is clear he will only give you money as and when it suits you which is not acceptable.

I’m still gobsmacked at how many hideous men get laid let alone get married and get to become parents

Then you need to do some research on abuse. It's how it works. Few men start off being shits. Many abusive men are charasmatic, charming, outwardly sociable and loved by many. They work hard at their public image. They are the type who 'love bomb'. They don't hang around with women who won't tolerate their shit but they do find women with chinks in their armour and they push and push and make the chinks great big bloody gaping holes. They test, gently, boundaries and continue to push and test as long as it's goes unnoticed or unchallenged. They gaslight, again gently in the first instance so you just shrug stuff off. They are the type of men who make others laugh and frequently you'll find your friends and family really like him. That friend's 'I don't like him ' voice is lost because she's the only one who's seen this shit before. By the time you're married, you are well and truly sucked in and as you 'married for life' you put up with it. You are invested - emotionally, financially, practically, mentally. Most domestic violence starts when a woman gets pregnant for the first time by which point your self esteem is on the floor, you are terrified of being a single mum (because you only have to look at the shit single mums get on these forums as an indicator of second class citizenship) and your means of earning a living has been diminished. Benefits have been stripped back to such an extent that even if you think you might want to leave, you can't see how you can financially manage (more women walked away from abusive relationships under the early days of tax credits than ever before - there was a very clear reason for that).

It is all very well being smug about how you got a decent man and how hard you worked at it. Thousands more did the same. Thousands more didn't get so lucky. And it is lucky, nothing more, nothing less.

@Twattersphere, but how many of those are families where the mother has died, rather than a NRP? I would have thought lone father from the death of the mother are much more prevalent than those from an absent mother.

This is my experience too.
We managed to civil until it came to money. He even grudged his mum buying the children uniforms and told her to stop.

My exh doesn't pay a penny. He's unemployed and doesn't claim any benefits, so we're on our own.

Tbh he's worn me down over time. I'm exhausted. He stirs my brain up like a blender and I end up thinking this is my fault. I'm beyond confused. Probably need to go to bed.