Partners money contributions

[Wildflower219]

So currently I am on mat leave and I am due to return to work next month. I am having to return early due to financial reasons so my work pay will be the same as I was receiving on mat leave approx 1550. My partner and I have a baby and he gives me 400 a month but that's for everything rent food bills clothes nursery fees etc. So the way I see it is that:
Partner earns approx 1100 - pays 100 for child for other relationship and gives me 400 so has 600 left for himself.
I earn 1550 - rent and council tax - 780
Bills gas electric Internet TV licence water etc - approx 180
Childs nursery 170
Food - approx 300 a month as he only likes bottled water fizzy drinks our cat food alone is 60 a month.
And on top of that I am the only one to buy baby clothes out of my own money.
AIBU to ask him to pay more especially with him now starting nursery should he pay towards this? Out total outgoings is say 1500 a month to which he pays 400 towards this. Yes I earn 450 a month more but even if I pay that on top so I pay 850 and he pays 400 I'm still paying 250 more and clothing the baby separately to all this and I buy everything for the house I have bought him all his Christmas presents my money paid for nursery decorations etc.

As there are 52 weeks in a year 1 in 3 of your dp's pay will be based on a 5 week period. So if he has say two months at £1,100 and one at £1,300 (assuming monthly tax tables used for tax and NI calcs).

Posted too early.

So I think you should combine your salaries and work out the joint net spend. He should have the same left as you and pay his child maintenance from that. He should be giving you at least another £200 monthly.

I hope he doesn't smoke round you and ds, get him to pack up on health grounds. Re cat costs- erm yes my 19yr old very spoilt old boy does cost a lot.

OP - yes I think it should be 50/50 for several reasons.

You are not married so I don’t think you should merge finances.

He is an adult who should be responsible for his own living costs.

He is an adult and should pay 50% of his daughter’s costs.

Going 50/50 on essential living costs is the natural result of the above. He sounds like a cocklodger. Don’t let him take advantage of you.

He needs to give you £100 a month more to make you both have equal spending money.

He buys his own personal items like clothes and toiletries.

Food is split.

Baby clothes are split.

Him smoking and only contributing £100 a month to his first child would make it very difficult for me to find him attractive I’m afraid

So he reeks of smoke, is thick, has no ambition, and is a deadbeat father. You chose to have a child with him.

Struggling to have sympathy for you, or anybody except his poor children.

Personally I think if you're a couple you should aim for around the same each in terms of disposable income. That being the case, your bills are £1430, plus you should add in baby costs in terms of activities and clothing and presents which may be another £100 a month? So £1530 in total. Your combined income is £2550 if you exclude the tiny amount he gives to his other child. That leaves £1020 or £510 each, so yes he should pay more.

Some people don't share in the same way and if you were happy to keep more money than him then another way is to split the bills according to income. You earn just over 60% of the income, so he should pay 40% of the bills, or £612. So yes he should pay more.

In either of the above scenarios he pays for other things for his other child (please tell me he buys them clothes, presents, pays for school trips and doesn't really just give £25 a week?) out of his own disposable income as that's life. You could argue that his income should be counted as £1100 for the purposes of this to be honest though that's between the two of you.

Either way, he should pay more and it's a bit of a red flag if this is a difficult conversation to have.

Honestly OP,

25 pounds a week is a good Dad? Really.

He sounds like a waster.

I wonder what the mother of his first child thinks of 25 pounds a week🙄

I have a feeling OP will ignore what we're all saying about the lack of support for his older child, then be shocked when after a few years she is also receiving £100 per month towards bringing up her child.

@billy1966 @PolkadotGiraffe I am not saying it is or isn't a good amount that is not my argument to have. If me and DP did break up then I would accept 100 a month with the exception that he minds DS at least one day a week. His child from previous relationship stays with us and he does buy him separate santa things gives extra towards uniform etc. Im sure if ex partner wants more she will ask for it although as I stated I could get 300 more so 700 as a single parent than I do now so not all single parents do bad. Both my sisters get nothing for their kids from previous relationships nor or their dad's even involved in their lives and that sickens me but that is a whole different conversartion. I only asked if IWBU to expect him to now pay more due to nursery fees being added on the of things so I'm going to sit down and draw him up a list of expenses.

Goodness you have low expectations OP.

Yes he should contribute more and stop paying for his clothes etc. He has £600 a month. He can buy his food and clothes.

If me and DP did break up then I would accept 100 a month with the exception that he minds DS at least one day a week.

Raise your bar. For your children's sake as well as yours. They should be learning that men and women have equal responsibility for the children they create.

Just because some women including your sisters get £0 from their exes doesn't make it morally ok for a man to contribute £100 a month to his own child while spending £120-160 a month on cigarettes! How can you think he's a good dad when he does that? Baffling.

So he expects you to pay for everything with your child, gives the mother of his first child £100 a month but spends £150 a month on fags? What a Prince!

Op you are an educated lady, why are you willing to accept so little from the father if your child.

You are worth much more than £100 a month. And your expectation that he will ‘mind’ his own child.

This seems to be a cycle in your family, break it. Show your children that men and women are equals, that men should step up and support their children Just like women do. Teach them a good work ethic, to strive for better.

Raise children who are the exact opposite of your feckless useless partner.

[quote Wildflower219]**@billy1966* @PolkadotGiraffe* I am not saying it is or isn't a good amount that is not my argument to have. If me and DP did break up then I would accept 100 a month with the exception that he minds DS at least one day a week. His child from previous relationship stays with us and he does buy him separate santa things gives extra towards uniform etc. Im sure if ex partner wants more she will ask for it although as I stated I could get 300 more so 700 as a single parent than I do now so not all single parents do bad. Both my sisters get nothing for their kids from previous relationships nor or their dad's even involved in their lives and that sickens me but that is a whole different conversartion. I only asked if IWBU to expect him to now pay more due to nursery fees being added on the of things so I'm going to sit down and draw him up a list of expenses.[/quote]
Get £300 per month more as a single parent from whom? The State? In which case you are saying that his contribution leaves your child with less than our (ungenerous) benefits system deems to be the minimum acceptable living cost.

Don't you think the other child's mother might also have rent/ mortgage/ utilities/ clothes/ nursery to pay etc? You really need to raise your standards if you think that him paying £100 per month towards you raising your child if you split up would be acceptable. Jesus. It would cost you the same to raise your child as it does now!

@PolkadotGiraffe
It’s irrelevant in that it has nothing to do with the advice I was giving op, so not sure why you are raising it in response to my post.

After paying his ex maintenance he has £1,000 remaining. At the moment he keeps £600 of that to fritter away. I’m saying he should be using at least another £500 towards their household costs.

She’s had a child with him now. What do you expect her to do? Pop it back in?

The way we do it to try and be fair is to each pay the % equivalent of our income towards the joint outgoings. This means the higher earner does have more money left for personal spends, but also means they contribute more. It feels fairer than a 50-50 contribution which tends to cause even more detriment to the lower earner.

So, in your situation:

• You jointly earn £2650 pcm
• Your £1550 is approx. 58.49% of that - so call it 58.5%
• His £1100 is therefore approx. 41.5%

In my view, to be fair, you should therefore contribute £877.50 pcm and he should contribute £622.50 pcm.

This would leave you with £672.50. He will be left with £477.50 or £377.50 after the £100 pcm for his other child as, to be fair, you shouldn't be impacted by that responsibility in my view.

If you wanted, you could even up the remaining personal spends or take the view that the person with more left covers any treats. But that is discretionary. I am the breadwinner and we use this method. As I therefore have more money in reality to spend, I do tend to buy more treats. I should say that for presents, I do also tend to accord to my % so he gets larger gifts ha!

[quote Wildflower219]**@arethereanyleftatall* I was thinking about a joint bank account he seemed keen but I worry its because he will think great I have more money now when in reality it's just to be fair. I don't know what he buys but he is always broke by say 14th of the month and he smokes alot so probably that. I buy his and babies clothes I never really get anything for myself don't do hair nails etc. @Parker231* yes he's the babies dad and where in a relationship. I just seem to pay alot more in like I have furnished the whole house myself which I'm glad of as it will always be mine but I just feel like he doesn't realise how much I pay out even say buying furniture paint decorating the nursery etc cribs and stuff was easily 500 alone[/quote]
Based on this, though having everything as joint money works for some people, I wouldn't do that.

I don't think 50-50 is fair on him as you do earn more and I am pretty sure if he were female people would be saying the same.

I would sit down and talk and work out a percentage that feels fair to you.

Obviously if you apply my above method there will be ad hoc expenditure that you haven't budgeted - so for example our daughter might need additional clothes or enrol in a club that costs more. For those things, we talk about it first and if both in agreement, we pay our respective % if there isn't enough money in the joint pot to cover it. If it is something frivolous the other wants to treat our daughter to, for example I tend to go a bit OTT with cutsey dress up stuff she doesn't necessarily need, I don't take that out of joint or ask for the % from my partner as it's totally a self indulgence on my part plus I do have more expendable income. I wouldn't say to her Mummy bought it though - it would be from us still.

You would accept £100 a month and 1 day a weeks care?

You have such low standards op it's really quite shocking. You should really speak to someone about why your self esteem is so low. I'm hoping that's the reason you're willing to put up with all of this, alternative is that you're more stupid than your partner. Speak to someone, you don't need to put up with this just because you think you can't do any better.

This is the second thread on child support I have seen recently where women expect so little from men in terms of child support.

If this lady and Her partners ex are representative of our society then it is broken. We need to work on girls self esteem, make them see they are worth more. Empower them. Of course we don’t want them to be financially reliant on men, we want them independent and strong.

But we want them to have enough self worth that they don’t accept men in their lives who are selfish, and who move around leaving a trail of children who they do not financially support.

Sorry for the rant. Truly depressed by this. Poor kids.

Good dads don't only contribute £25 a week toward their child while spending at least £30 a week on cigarettes for themselves. You say the mum is ok with just that, it sounds like he thinks you're ok with the minimum he contributes towards his second child with you too so doesn't mind spending money that should be feeding and clothing his children on cigarettes and video games.

I could split from my child's Dad and he could win the lottery and never need money from me and I'd still not only contribute £25 a week while spending more on cigarettes for myself, if nothing else I'd want my child to know I didn't not bother with my financial commitments just because the other parent was able to to cover my slack. Is he not embarrassed that when his children are older he can't look them in the eye and say he made sacrifices to ensure he paid his way?

You said you're willing to work 24/7 to provide for your child and he wont even quit smoking. Women shouldn't have to ask for the men to step up, good dads do not need to be told you don't twist about disposable income for cigarettes and video games while only contributing £25 a week. He could have at least opened a savings account for his first child and put some in every week for their future if the ex really won't accept any more.

How often if his first child staying with you overnight and does he leave those costs to you and his ex too? If it's only weekends or every other weekends then £25 a week is crap, if it's more like 50/50 then who pays for the clothes and extra food and bedroom furniture etc at his home?

OP if you was the NRP parent would you think that 25 quid a week and a nights baby sitting in the standard or would you fight for more time and to equally fund your child. It’s awful that this is what you would expect knowing you would do more if roles were reversed. I know you would go without for your child it’s not much to ask for the father to have the same commitment.

[quote Mmn654123]@PolkadotGiraffe
It’s irrelevant in that it has nothing to do with the advice I was giving op, so not sure why you are raising it in response to my post.

After paying his ex maintenance he has £1,000 remaining. At the moment he keeps £600 of that to fritter away. I’m saying he should be using at least another £500 towards their household costs.

She’s had a child with him now. What do you expect her to do? Pop it back in?[/quote]
I would hope she'd give him a kick up the backside to take on more work/ look for a better paid job so that he can afford both of his children properly!

My previous post in response to yours was simply highlighting that your calculations assumed he should continue paying only £100 per month for his first child.

@PolkadotGiraffe
Well if I was Op my priority would be to ensure he pays his fair share of his living costs so I am not subsidising him. If that leaves him cashless maybe it will motivate him to work harder but Op isn’t responsible for that. And she certainly shouldn’t encourage him to pay more to his ex while she is paying his living costs!

I suggest getting a piece of paper or even better a spreadsheet writing down all joint costs to give you your monthly bill requirements so rent, childcare (make sure you sign up for government 20%), food utilities (we keep our own mobile phones separate) etc
Then sit down and work out a percentage based on each of your salaries and set up a joint account. The set amount goes straight into the joint bank account and its for household costs only (not cigarettes!). Keep your own accounts for wages and any individual expenses and stop buying his clothes he's an adult!
Explain it to him and stress the joint account is only for household bills.

This is the best system my husband and I came up with as I earn more than him but also get annoyed at his random purchases when everything went into a joint account.

Oh and get him to quit smoking £120 a month is ridiculous amount on cigarettes!