School trips divorced parents

[Cally23]

Hi,

I'm trying to get my exh to agree to pay 50% of school trips. We have 2 dc in primary and trips are affordable and basic. But there is one residential coming up not sure how much prob around £200. I'm worried about secondary school though.

I don't want to set up presidence that I pay for it all. I'm only on basic income. My ex is a high earner and has a second income from his partner (irrelevant but still, shows the imbalance)

He thinks child maintenance pays for everything and should cover no more. I get £500 pm for 2 kids. Does this cover the £2k ski trip in secondary?! Or do parents just not send their kids to these trips? Don't want them to miss out but don't want to panic and make a fuss if really, not many go on all these pricey trips.

Missoverwhelmed the government has set the calculation for CM at a minimum. It's hardly the gold standard for providing for your children financially.

£500 could easily be used up to provide for the children. It takes into account housing costs too. In many areas there is a huge difference between a 1 bed property and a 2 or 3 bed one. There's extra water, heating, food and petrol costs. It's not just a handful of activities and food that is covered by CM.

I hate it when people claim the it's a huge sum if the CM is more than a pitiful token gesture. It's totally fair that it depends on the parent's income. Just to annoy you further, my daughter gets considerably more than £500 a month and that's the minimum the government has calculated.

@pinkyredrose

We have our SS 3 nights (4 days) a week & my partner pays £170 a month to his ex

Thought you'd moved 250miles away and saw your SS in the holidays?

@pinkyredrose

We have our SS 3 nights (4 days) a week & my partner pays £170 a month to his ex

Thought you'd moved 250miles away and saw your SS in the holidays?

She won’t be back!!

What a pointless contribution to a thread - just a plain lie!

What's a plain lie?

Goodness my kids went to private school and the ski trips were around £800 max, and even then many couldn't afford to go. They bussed them (23 hours as we lived on an island), to try and make it affordable for as many as possible. Your school needs a reality check.
As for your ex, my husband paid alimony, child maintenance and EVERYTHING to do with the kids - school fees, all school trips, uniform etc etc. He did baulk at paying half when his ex wanted to take them on an expensive holiday - his reasoning was we couldn't afford to go on one ourselves (with the kids), so why should he pay for her to go (as he had also calculated that she had more disposable income - all from him - than we did). So I think your husband could be more generous- they're his kids too after all.

@pinkyredrose

What's a plain lie?

I assume that person was referring to Missoverwhelmed post, not yours. Hope so anyway.

@pinkyredrose

What's a plain lie?

The poster you were referring to

As in the pp lying
Not you!

@Missoverwhelmed
Please come back and tell us What possessed you to come on this thread to tell a complete lie!!

Such hard work isn't it and causes extra issues to deal with.

My EX was infuriating and would agree to theses expensive trips for our DC's and then leave me with the bill. I was backed into a corner by the expectations of the kids and the school.
He did suggest he would pay his share proportionate to his contact and reductions in place through CM for his partners children - but never actually did - and the school wouldn't (rightly) get involved in "you've paid £1873.54 Mrs HS, but there is £126.46 owed Mr HS"- so I would end up paying it all.

Made my blood boil. Disney dad to the kids, set them up to know they could go on the trips " dad says I can" determined his children weren't going to miss out because of his actions.., yet I was the one struggling to pay.

If I'd not payed he would have said "your mum has stopped you going as she won't pay".

My ex is paying for half my daughters residential on top of maintenance . It is the only thing I have ever asked for help with . He said he was happy to pay at least half . I think the problem is while it would be the reasonable thing to do your ex doesn’t have to so unfortunately can’t make him .

@Missoverwhelmed

Being a high earner doesn’t mean he has to provide additional money. £500 a month is a lot of money & you don’t state how often he has his child. We have our SS 3 nights (4 days) a week & my partner pays £170 a month to his ex, who also expects additional money for school trips. I think sometimes it’s forgotten that we also have bills to pay. We have another child together (who we don’t spend £170 extra a month on vs SS) & it should be fair across the board. If we couldn’t afford our child to go on a trip they wouldn’t go (and sometimes don’t) but it’s expected we cough up additional money for our SS to attend every trip. Live within your means, our children (all of them whether a bonus step child/biological) need to be taught the value of money

But your other child is an eight-month-old baby, so of course he doesn't go on any school trips!

Yanbu to expect the big expenses running into hundreds to be split between you, that’s what my ex and I did.

But you are getting a decent amount of maintenance, so if you are contributing as much to children’s costs (separate from your own) then it should be doable on a monthly basis. It doesn’t really make much difference how much your ex earns or is putting in his pension as long as he is providing adequately for his children, which it sounds like he is doing.

I do ask my ex for money towards school trips away. He has so far given me half for these. The secondary school trips are very expensive and I doubt I'll be able to pay half of a say £2k trip. I do however plan to encourage me DD to find some of it herself. I'm not meaning save her pocket money but more like sponsored events etc that she could do with a friend.

My exh will not pay for anything extra on top of maintenance. The annoying thing is though he sometimes promises the dc something that we will supposedly go halves on extra on top of maintenance then refuse to give the money telling me it needs to come out of maintenance. Learnt my lesson on this one now.

Only about 30 kids out of 1000 go on the £2k school trips. Dont worry about it.

Other school trips. My dc havent had any for last 2 years because of covid school have not run them.

Previous to that they had a fun week last week of term and can choose two school trips. Some are free, some are not.

@Missoverwhelmed

Being a high earner doesn’t mean he has to provide additional money. £500 a month is a lot of money & you don’t state how often he has his child. We have our SS 3 nights (4 days) a week & my partner pays £170 a month to his ex, who also expects additional money for school trips. I think sometimes it’s forgotten that we also have bills to pay. We have another child together (who we don’t spend £170 extra a month on vs SS) & it should be fair across the board. If we couldn’t afford our child to go on a trip they wouldn’t go (and sometimes don’t) but it’s expected we cough up additional money for our SS to attend every trip. Live within your means, our children (all of them whether a bonus step child/biological) need to be taught the value of money

You mean my SS - not “our” SS.

Nothing annoyed my girls more than their ex step-mother doing that - it’s so disrespectful. He’s not your husbands step-son, he’s his son.

@hambletonSquare Gosh, sorry, your ex is an arse.

@wendz86 Yes, reasonable isn’t his vibe sadly.

@namechangeagain “He should be supporting his children to the extent that they enjoy the same lifestyle that he enjoys himself.” THIS SO MUCH.

@willyoujustbequiet I fought to have significant purchased like school uniform, school trips and medical costs (orthodontics and the like) included in the financial order but he outright refused whilst the solicitor bills ran up and up.