To say 50/50 isn’t working and I don’t want to continue

[StarLines]

Ex had another strop about division of care and I’m getting sick of it.

I don’t work Monday’s for childcare and half day on Fridays (WFH). Tues-Thurs are compressed hours - so early starts. Ex works Mon - Fri from home. DS in nursery Tues-Thurs.

EXP’s idea of the split is that he has him Tues-Thurs nights, I pick him up first thing Fri morning (because he’s adamant he can’t do any work with DS - despite my job having more responsibility) and I have him until Tues morning or Mon night to make it 50/50.

So I am either working or with our son - no free time at all, he just has to pick him up from nursery, put him to bed and take him in the next day.

I love DS dearly but I want a day a week where I can do my own thing and have a lie in. I’m now thinking what is the point of 50/50. He’s not spending any qualitative time with DS and I could just as well drop him off in the week too. It makes very little difference.

I tried offering a simple split rota where we alternate each week but of course, he has no childcare for Mons or Fri so I’m unreasonable to suggest that too.

AIBU thinking that’s completely unreasonable? How would I go about telling him that we are no longer doing 50/50 because it doesn’t benefit me or DS. Only ExP?

It’s fine having Tues-Thurs to a degree, but I can’t go out of evening because I start work at 7:30. If I have DS, I can drop him off at 7 so it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference. Mornings with DS are easy with nursery - just dress, brush teeth and out the door. They feed him breakfast.

I get your annoyance completely, but if you call off the 50/50 surely that leaves you with even less time to yourself? Unless you're planning on switching to every other weekend for your ex I guess.

I can relate OP I had a similar routine with my ex..

I think you definitely need to incorporate a nursery for DS though. What about CMS does your ex pay?

My son is 2, he is in creche full time. However the childcare we have in place is his Dad takes him every second week from wednesday evening to Sunday. I have him 10 days and his dad 4 days in a 2 week period.
When he is with his Dad he doesnt attend creche as his Dad doesnt drive and he lives 30 mins away. His Dad complains as he is working from home so cant work every second Thursday & Friday - but he doesnt contribute to childcare. I have to do all the drops and collections as well.
I work with a Global team and I need to have a few evenings and mornings I can work early/late. So this way I also have every second weekend with some time for myself

It's also mad that the nursery care is all on your ex time but yet you pay for it!

How would I go about telling him that we are no longer doing 50/50 because it doesn’t benefit me or DS

Tell him he has to pay for the childcare Tues, Weds, Thursday, as those are "his" days.

Ex sounds like the worst kind of parent.

Don't let his selfishness make you selfish. You are understandably resentful of his ability to capitalise on your UC and work arrangements, whilst suffering no inconvenience to himself. His attitude sucks.

I don't have any advice on how to arrange a more equal division of childcare time, but please don't allow your resentment of your ex to become resentment of your lovely son.

I'm in a two-parent household and I got NO weekends away from the children, and precious few lie-ins when they were small. It's a normal part of being a parent, and eventually they get bigger and start sleeping in, and by then you will have a lovely relationship based on Saturday morning snuggles in your bed, breakfast in front of the telly, time spent together just living and being in each other's company. Your ex won't have any of that. I pity him.

The reality is I’ll probably be better off ending 50/50. We get the discounted childcare because of me so that would still be in place. I’d still have no downtime but I’d get extra financial support via CMS (another frustration as Ex obviously doesn’t pay for days out or food for DS as he doesn’t need to). And I’d hope that Ex would miss DS enough to actually have him every other weekend which would be an improvement on the situation now.

@Babyboomtastic

I see both sides here tbh.

I agree that you could do with some down time as he has that and you don't.

But reading your OP, you say that you have Monday and half day Friday off for childcare reasons, and compress the rest of the week, so I can see the logic in you using you it childcare days for childcare. The compressed hours might be difficult for childcare depending on how early the starts are, and it's easier to be child free after a very long day, so the current arrangement facilitates that.

I think you both need to come up with a 2 week plan that gives you both some time 'off' and both good quality time also.

I agree with this - it's quite tricky. It does make sense for you to have him Monday and Friday afternoon rather than him being technically with his dad but actually in childcare, but then if his dad had him over the weekend it would mean that DS is shuttled back and forward a lot, which I don't think is ideal from the point of view of DS feeling stable and secure - if he's nursery-aged then he's not going to understand a complicated timetable so the simplest possible arrangement is the best, really, for not giving him a sense of being constantly between homes.

It’s not 50/50 and as you say he doesn’t actually spend much time with him anyway

End it as it is now and do alternate weekends, do he can spend quality time with his child and perhaps one night during the week? Still less than 50/50 so he should be paining maintenance or tell him it’s a week each, and he can sort childcare on his weeks, or you go back to work full time and both can split the childcare costs

The difficulty is that you need childcare if you're working. Both of you do. So it's unfair to expect your ex to have him and work at the same time. But if you do alternate weeks, you'll have to either agree to put him in nursery full time, accepting that there are days he doesn't 'need' to be there, or accept that there will be days that you work and look after him, which isn't really viable.

Fri-Monday nights one week and Tues-Thurs nights the other, with swap around after tea on the Friday night, and the person doing the Fri-Mon doing nursery drop off on the Tuesday, would be the fairest arrangement, imo.

You're essentially subsidising him.

The childcare is entirely for his benefit, but you're "paying" for it by not being able to work more hours or progress into a better paid job. 50/50 presumably means he pays no child maintenance - is that right?

I'd make him sort childcare for "his" days. Tell him to talk to the nursery and have the contract moved so it's with him instead of you. He'll have to pay (a lot) more depending on his earnings, but that will leave you free to work more hours if you choose and progress at work so eventually you can earn more and have a more comfortable life for you and your son.

If it really doesn't work financially, you could threaten to do this unless he pays you maintenance so you can book a babysitter for some weekends to give you some time to yourself.

Split the week differently. You do sun-weds, he does weds eve - sat. He will need to sort & fund childcare for Friday, as you are sorting and funding it for monday.

@Covert19

Ex sounds like the worst kind of parent.

Don't let his selfishness make you selfish. You are understandably resentful of his ability to capitalise on your UC and work arrangements, whilst suffering no inconvenience to himself. His attitude sucks.

I don't have any advice on how to arrange a more equal division of childcare time, but please don't allow your resentment of your ex to become resentment of your lovely son.

I'm in a two-parent household and I got NO weekends away from the children, and precious few lie-ins when they were small. It's a normal part of being a parent, and eventually they get bigger and start sleeping in, and by then you will have a lovely relationship based on Saturday morning snuggles in your bed, breakfast in front of the telly, time spent together just living and being in each other's company. Your ex won't have any of that. I pity him.

Lots of good suggestions here- the situation is clearly not fair. But this post is so wise and I needed to read it for my own similar situation (ex trying to arrange everything for his own convenience and to avoid cma). So thank you Covert19.

I would suggest he has him every other fri,sat & 2 nights during the week. Not fair that he gets every weekend off and DS gets no quality time with dad

You do every Sunday night and Monday night, he does every Tuesday night and Wednesday night, and you alternate Thursday-Saturday nights. He will have to arrange childcare for his Fridays.

Either that or he accepts it's not 50:50 as it stands and pays maintenance 🤷🏻‍♀️

This arrangement sounds far too complicated. But TBH I would never have done one week on one week off even when DS was older, and certainly not with a two year old.

When me and eXH split we arranged it so that DS spent two nights a week at mine and two nights a week at eXH’s. And then he spent alternate weekends. So if he was at mine on a mon/tuesday he spent Wednesday/Thursday at his dad’s and would then spend the weekend with me. Then we would swap that round for the next week. Iyswim.

I would say to your eXP that you want to change the arrangement to do something like that, so he will be having DS every other weekend. And during the day when either of you has to work you are responsible for arranging the childcare.

The most equal spilt I know of are friends with 50:50 care of their daughter. The mother always has the child Mondays and Tuesdays, and the father always has her on wednesdays and Thursdays. They then take it in turns to have the child from Friday after school til Monday morning. They share the cost of after school care and holiday care equally. you could tweak this if need be and just pay for the days you have your child and they are in nursery
Although your child isn't at school yet, this arrangement could work equally well for you. It's a very simple solution but seems to work very well.

@AlternativePerspective
Cross posted , but we're suggesting the same thing!

YABU to expect either of you to be able to WFH with DS around. You need to sort childcare or one of you drop the hours. It's not workable (do your job even know?) and also can't be particularly fair on him being ignored for half a day.

I think you just say "it's not working for DS as he is getting zero quality time with you and it doesn't work for me as I get no down time so I am not being the rested parent I could be"

If he refuses to change schedules I would stop contact and tell him to sort out mediation as it sounds the only way to force his hand - at least you would get more child maintenance!!!

He could do Wednesday- Sunday week one, Wednesday to Friday week Two And drop hi to you noon Friday.

He's not going to change willingly. Currently he gets to say he has the child 50:50, so pays no CMS, but does none of the work and covers none of the costs.
There are 2 ways I suspect to force any change firstly to take it to court/mediation.
The second would be to work on the Monday to decompress/increase your hours, book ds into nursery for a Monday, use whatever UC you are entitled to for the Monday as it is you that is entitled to it not him, and then he will have to cover tues/wed/thurs childcare if they are his days! You do not need his permission to do this.
If he is not happy with this then tell him the only alternative is that he makes some meaningful time for his son rather than playing games and pays up the relevant maintenance.
Either option will hit his pocket so you are going to have to be forceful to get any change.

I don’t understand and will definitely be the odd one out here, but why do you need time off from your child? Why do separated parents need a weekend to themselves? Married/cohabiting parents don’t tend to just take a whole weekend off on such a regular basis. In four years I’ve not even had a night to myself let alone a whole weekend.

I see it so much, especially with newly separated parents. I feel very sorry for the children who are passed from person to person just so their parents can live the single life again.

I do everything for my daughter; I don’t feel like I ever need time off. I don’t get much help from DH, for legitimate reasons. I would hate to be apart from her for so much time.

You are getting subsidised childcare which is meant to benefit you, but yet in fact ex is getting all the benefit of it! You on the other hand are left juggling work and childcare on your Fridays.

That makes no sense at all.

I wanted to say something like littleowl said but couldn’t quite find the words to set it out!

*Why do separated parents need a weekend to themselves? Married/cohabiting parents don’t tend to just take a whole weekend off on such a regular basis. In four years I’ve not even had a night to myself let alone a whole weekend.

I see it so much, especially with newly separated parents. I feel very sorry for the children who are passed from person to person just so their parents can live the single life again.*

^^
What you and your DH do is between you.
But generally speaking, married / together couples should and do share the load between them,‘albeit in the same household. They would normally each give each other the odd lie in and some down time.

Separated parents don’t have anyone else in the household, so the usual way is for them to share our time so they still each do their bit.

Not sure why that’s difficult!