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?

Why do separated parents need a weekend to themselves?

Try being an actual single parent for a year and maybe you’ll have an answer to that question. It’s very much not the same as having a live in husband who doesn’t “help much”

I think the answer is he has him every tues- thurs and then alternate EOW.

If he disputes then ask him on which days does he plan to ha e quality time with DS.

So he’ll have him 2 nights one week. 5 nights the next.

Does that mean you’ll get no CMS? At least your getting the UC.

There's some terrible advice on here op, that must come from people who have no understanding of the system.

You can't stop contact as one poster advised. Even when my ex literally tried to poison my son that was deemed barely acceptable justification for stopping contact and I had to restart contact.

You can't really threaten to stop 50/50 either. The financial arguments will be of no interest to the court. Nor even will your son's wellbeing.

Best you can do is try and agree/mediate to reach a tweaked version of 50/50

I wish the court system worked the way so many imagine it does. But it doesn't. There is a real drive to 50/50 even in cases where clear evidence of abuse has been produced.

@Osirus what planet are you on? I would love to spend every day with my kids. I would love to not hand them over to their dad who was physically and emotionally abusive to me.

And in healthy co parenting relationships surely it is good that children spend relaxed weekend time with each parent.

@LittleOwl153

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.

This. You’re giving him all of the benefits you sacrifice your time and earning potential for. He sounds like a right arsehole.

YANBU. You need this time for yourself to either chill out or maybe go out and find or be with a new partner. I think if you want to be kind you can give your Ex and his partner one weekend off a month after all she should have realised that he had responsibilities to his DC when she started a relationship. Your Ex is very lucky that you have agreed not to work more and save him a packet but now they find they are time poor and want the weekend to spend his gains in. Good luck.

You hold the cards here, OP. Tell him no, he needs to do half the weekends and that if he wants more time to himself he needs to work part-time and compress his schedule too.

I don't know if ending 50/50 is a good long term decision, both for your child's sake and because when you hit the school years holiday and sick days need covering and 50/50 can be a huge boon to you there. Pushing him to actually do 50/50 instead of trying to fob off his responsibility onto you would, long term, probably be better.

Depending on your job, what the finances would really look like and whether you are hurting your future financial prospects by working part-time, I think you should consider going back to work full time even if you will have to pay a bit more now. He is getting a huge amount of financial benefit out of your sacrifice and you are not.

While some of the suggestions are completely fair, getting Ex to agree is likely to be impossible. And at the end of the day the most important person in this is DS.

I would suggest putting DS in nursery on a Friday, and ex has DS Wed night to Sat lunchtime. Tell him you are no longer paying for nursery on a Thursday- that’s his day to pay for or find alternative childcare.

Depending on whether you increase your hours to work a full day on a Friday or just juggle your hours so you aren’t doing such long days, you will have a little more time in the week. And hopefully a Sat morning lie-in!

Wow - no wonder he doesn’t want to swop if on ‘his days’ he simply has to take DS to nursery and not do any actual childcare! What a chancer!

I don't think the arrangement is fair to OP at all, but I do also think that she'd find that if she went for her option of just having DS full-time it would actually feel like quite a lot of extra work on the Tues-Thurs. I work compressed hours and the days where I have to get DS ready in a rush for nursery, race him there, race back to be ready to start work, race to go get him at the end of the day after a long and often packed day, desperately try and cram in some time with him while also sorting tea, bath and bed don't feel like I'm 'doing no childcare and having it completely easy' as people are saying OP's ex has it. DH works four days a week and the day he's at home and so I don't do any of that and just sort myself and work feels pretty blissful by comparison (as does the day that I don't work and so I have DS all day but with no rushing around). I absolutely agree that the arrangement is to his advantage but I don't think it's true that OP is getting nothing from it.

This is why 50:50 needs to be changed to include EOW so Thur-Mon week and then Tues -Fri the other.

If he refuses just say you aren't paying his childcare anymore 🤷🏽‍♀️ you will pay for the Monday and Tuesday you need.

I’ve continued on reduced hours to benefit us both, something he doesn’t factor in either.

is he paying your missing pension contributions? etc etc.
TBH I'd try to switch it up to alternate weeks, or EOW for him and nothing else.

I’m sure plenty of people would think the way me and ex do 50/50 is a nightmare, but it works for DS and us. We didn’t want to be in a position where DS was away from either of us for extended periods and neither of us wanted to miss the opportunity to do fun stuff with DS on the weekend. To be really honest, we live very close to one another, which probably makes our way a lot easier. We’re also both really organised and stay on the same page with home routines and things like rules, bed time etc. But this is how we do it.

Monday- ex drops DS at school, I collect
Tuesday- DS with me
Wednesday- we rotate weekly. One week I pick up, one week ex picks up
Thursday- depending on the week above I or ex take DS to school. Ex picks up
Friday- with ex
Saturday- I collect DS at 10
Sunday- I drop DS back with ex

I do know it looks like a lot of upheaval. But we agreed to try it and it’s worked this way for 3 years now. Ds is very happy and settled. We both get equal time at the weekend. Would something like that work? We are very aware of ds and remain happy to change if we feel he wants us to, also we know when he’s a little older he’ll want to have control over things more and we will both adjust to suit him.

It all reeks of him not wanting to parent and not waning to pay you maintenance- he wants the cheap and easy option.

As soon as you refuse to pay for his childcare anymore he will be far more engaged in changing arrangements... it hasn't occurred to him what will happen when he is school age and there may not be suitable childcare provision and he will expect you to sort it or that school finishes around 3pm and oh he'll expect you to sort that too...

Could you do the following
Ex - Thursday - Friday one week (2nights) and Thursday night - Sunday evening (3 nights) /Wednesday - Sunday evening ( 4 nights) the following week which is 5 or 7 nights over 2 weeks depending on which pattern you chose
You get your Mondays and every other weekend, you pay childcare 2 days a week Tuesdays and Wednesdays, he pays child care 2 days a week Thursdays and Fridays so you could work longer on a Friday if you wanted.

It's really hard discussing things with Ex. Work have offered me more hours and honestly, I could really do with them as I'm struggling fitting in everything I do in the hours I have. However, I would lose out on some of the support from UC and I'm not sure it's financially worth it.

I have WFH on a Friday since I came back from mat leave. It's only 4 hours, so I actually do those across the whole day - 30 mins over breakfast, settle him into some toys and do another 30 mins, more work over nap time, etc. I don't mind exactly, but I've had to make a lot of changes to my work and lifestyle and ex has made none.

I don't understand comments from people in relationships being surprised I'd like some time to myself. When we were still together, Ex would get up with DS on a Sat morning, I'd get up on a Sun. I could pop out and go shopping by myself. I could focus on dinner whilst Ex would keep him entertained in the living room. It's little things like that.

I think that yes, a fair set up would be something like Mon-Tue me, Weds-Thurs him and weekends shared fortnightly - but of course Ex would need to set up childcare and I'm sure he'll argue against that too.

50/50 should be better for DS and it is important he spends time with him. But at the moment it's costing me more financially and in time. I'm exhausted, broke and very fed up with it all.

If he won't discuss it with you, just tell him you're cancelling/rearranging the nursery place so it covers the hours you need (Tue/Fri) and he'll have to arrange something else for his hours. Then do it.

Think about it... If you work PT on Friday but book a whole nursery day on Friday, that could be a bit of downtime for you (as well as massively less stressful than balancing wfh and childcare).

Just call ex's bluff.

Do what you want work wise - perhaps ask for a 6 month trial? Put DS in 4/5 days per childcare and tell ex that it's EOW moving forward and claim via CMS.

If he isn't happy he can take you to mediation and court.

You have tried discussing it and he will only do what is best for him.

Put something like this in writing-->

What is best for DS is quality time with both of us over a weekend and a Mum that isn't run ragged. You will not engage with discussion therefore you are forcing me to stop the current arrangements. I will attend mediation to discuss when you arrange it. In the meantime you can have DS EOW Friday, collecting from me/nursery at x pm and dropping to nursery/me on Monday at y am.

Then ring up CMS and put in a formal claim as main carer doing more nights.

I agree this sounds like he's doing this to dodge maintenance. Nothing wrong with 50/50 as a principle but not like this.

It’s not really 50-50 though anyway. You are paying for 85% of the childcare Tue-Thurs (even if through UC, it’s you that says providing the care via the nursery). He’s only sorting out just under half a day if he’s paying 15%.

So you are doing every weekend, Monday’s and Fridays. He takes him from 6pm to 8am (ish?) 3 or 4 times a week. That’s not 50-50. If it were 50-50, he’d be responsible for sorting childcare tues-thurs and you’d have no childcare bills at all.

He’s having his cake (no maintenance, little responsibility, lots of high value free time) and eating it too.

Might I suggest the following email:

"Hi ex, just to let you know, you will need to arrange childcare for your days (Wednesday and Thursday) with DS from the end of the month. I have rearranged his present nursery days to cover my working days (Monday and Friday) and am planning to do extra hours if I can so DS and I can have a more comfortable life in the long run. So you will have to arrange your own childcare going forward."

A much better 50-50 pattern would be 2-2-5-5.

You could take Mon and Tuesday. You’ve got Monday off and Tuesday you pay for nursery. He gets Wednesday and Thursday (and has to provide the childcare for that himself; it’s not your responsibility) and you alternate Fridays and weekends (you do your half day working from home; he makes his own arrangements).

You both get proper time with your DS and time off too that way.

If he won't discuss it with you, just tell him you're cancelling/rearranging the nursery place so it covers the hours you need (Tue/Fri) and he'll have to arrange something else for his hours. Then do it

This! Good advice.

@Osirus You don't understand because you've clearly never been a single parent. Having a husband who '"doesn't help much" or works away a lot isn't the same thing.

Being a single parent is exhausting - mentally, physically, emotionally. You don't have anyone else to run the 'little things' past when unsure, every decision is solely upon you, every wake up in the night, every bad day at school/nursery, every sick day.

In order to be able to manage this and stay healthy (mentally, physically, emotionally), most single parents need a little time out to recharge and have a little self-care.

Also, as single parents, we are allowed to want and have a relationship with another adult. That really isn't easy to do (at least at the beginning) with no time to yourself whatsoever as I am a responsible parent and would't have men to the house who my children didn't know for quite some time, as is (rightly so) so often a subject on here.

Hopefully that's cleared it up for you. We are not bad parents for expecting the other parent to do their bit, just as they did at the point of conception.

Regarding splitting the care op, my dc are school aged so I know I don't have the same child care issues as you but my ex has them every tuesday from 5/5.30pm (they go to school from his on a wednesday), EOW and the weekends he doesn't have them he also has them on a thursday, the same hours as the tuesday. So it's 2 nights one week, 3 the next. Not 50/50 but it works for us and the kids prefer being here a bit more anyway (we are still in the family home).

I really think he needs to be having your ds EOW.