Aibu to think not paying maintenance should be grounds for blocking contact

[Whypaymumwillsavetheday]

I’ve always gone along with ‘the child’s right to contact with their parent comes before any disputes over money’, ‘maintenance isn’t linked to contact’ ‘it’s not pay per view’. I’m now starting to think it is not in the best interests of a child to have a relationship with a parent who is unwilling and/or unable to provide the basic necessities. If I was to disregard my child’s needs in the same way, there would likely be serious intervention from social services. What is the difference?

Yes! We have 50/50 custody (I'm the stepmum) but this is so incredibly rare in this country. Dads are secondary parents here. If the child is old enough and the dad able and willing, custody should be 50/50.

Not paying maintenance should result in:
A) legal sanctions
B) losing passport until money is up to date
C) limited contact
D) state bailiffs pursuing the owed money

The parent the child lives with has to find the money to feed their kids though don't they? These men (and its almost always men), need to step up.

I think it's a good suggestion.

I've never come across a wonderful, loving, involved and capable parent who has the money to pay child support but lies and dodges their way out of it and refuses to contribute a penny.

Good parents support their children.

The absolute best you'll get out of a parent that begrudges their child a penny is a 'disney dad' but mostly you'll get someone who dips in and out of their kids lives and badmouths the other parent.

I question how much value such a person brings to a child's life.

Meant to say that I believe if the government did turn round and say ok we are going to make it law that you have to pay child support or you can't see your child - we would be shocked by the number of fathers who would happily take that deal.

No, I don't agree. If children were pay per view, the dead beats who don't want to pay but maintain some contact would soon fuck off so they don't have to pay.

Enforce payments. HMRC manage to get moey owed to them as they are proactive and the repercussions of not paying are high. Put those same repercussions in place for non payment of child support.

And watching your child suffer because you refuse to pay support because she spends it on her nails and sky tv is ok?

If you cant be bothered to support your child, why do you have the right to be involved. In fact this kind of parent is probably one who wont make specific plans to see said child either, and turns up when they bloody feel like it - which is much worse for the child as they will constantly be in limbo

Financial abuse is abuse and in my personal opinion withholding money from your children (because that's what child maintenance is for) is highly abusive and such people shouldn't be allowed around the child

Because why should you allow an abuser around a child

No. That's obtuse. In what way does it say to increase contact based on amount of payment? My example was to show that refusal or reluctance to pay maintenance is most often a form of abuse. It abuses the RP, and frankly, the child. It is often part of a pattern of abuse and I was saying that problems paying are often an indicator of unhealthy parenting which I think means lots of contact is not always the best for the child.

Why set up a system where the punishment only punishes the victims?

I don’t think it’s weaponising a child to withhold contact from someone who is a negative influence in their life. A parent who doesn’t provide materially to meet their child’s needs, by choice, or who chooses to harm their child in other ways (e.g. affairs, abuse of child’s other parents) is not a positive person for that child to be around.

Children shouldn’t be weaponised but they should be protected from very negative influences, bad parents and anyone who doesn’t have their best interests at heart. How on earth can it be a positive thing for a child to spend time with someone who chooses not to buy them food, school uniform etc or ensure they have a safe warm home?

Its not weaponising children, it’s protecting them.

Most women don’t want 50/50 though! I am on many single parent groups and the vast majority of mums don’t want to “share” the child and are very against 50/50

At one point I was providing my children with packed lunches to go and spend the day with their father now you would think this would result in them (the father) being grateful for this kind gesture but oh no what happened was extreme anger when once he was working and had a job I stopped that and I was told that I ought to be packing a little bag for them without within they need their visits this is all whilst he’s not paying any maintenance by the way.

but what was the alternative I said to him if you can’t look after them and feed them you can’t take them and that looked as though I was withholding contact.

he also kidnapped them one day took them overnight to Hotel and then brought them into school in Yesterdays clothing having not had breakfast and with no lunch to feed them.
Who do you think about the bollocking for that pick up time ? Not to mention the school bailing him out by going and buying breakfast and lunch rather than pointing him in the direction of the shops.

Women don’t want 50/50 though do they and I believe it’s mainly women, I see it on here so many times women don’t want to “share”
their child even though it’s not just their child, or they don’t want to be “part time parents” loads of women seem to actually resent their ex having contact with I find sad, which is probably the reason why many are happy to stop contact if they are not getting maintenance

Because its not healthy for the kids. Pissing around going from one house to the other, no real base to call their own.

Let’s be honest most men don’t have the own house, they have their house with the new woman who rules the roost making the children feel particularly unwelcome

@BiscoffSundae I think this is because once you share 50/50 you get no child support. While that is fair enough I do understand why some mums would find that frustrating.

If the NRP does not have adequate materials for the child in the way of books, clothing, toys, the means to buy healthy food and cook nutritious meals for them and RP will still have to pick up the slack even when going 50/50, RP will be left out of pocket. If it's 50/50 it has to be 50/50 split of costs not just contact time.

No that’s not the reasons they give trust me it comes up often it’s always “I can’t bare to be away from my kids, it breaks my heart, I have no purpose when I’m not with them, I’m so lonely” it’s all me me me. That’s the reason why dads don’t step up more women don’t actually want them to.

I understand why you think this and it’s really crap when maintenance isn’t paid - and you know they can pay.

However I think it’s cutting off you nose to spite your face - then you get no maintenance and no break either! Plus the expenses for that additional time.
If they’re actually crap at looking after the child(ren) when they have them, that’s another thing and a separate reason to consider whether contact is working.

If the children don’t see their parent when they previously did, the danger is they’ll feel abandoned by them and it will affect their self esteem. Not always but it’s a real risk. It’s important to consider this I think.

A lot of Mums don’t think 50:50 is in their child’s interests rather than not wanting to do it from their own pov. For instance the Dad didn’t actually do any parenting when they were together (often the reason for the break up!) and they wouldn’t have a clue what to do now.

In some cases 50:50 works for teens where it doesn’t for younger ones, who want the stability of a “main home”.

I understand where OP is coming from. Of course, it's not fair to "weaponise" contact etc, but there is clearly a very high correlation between men who don't pay child support (when they could/should) and men who are not good fathers.

There's this pervasive idea that a relationship with the dad is always better than no relationship. But I question that. Because a relationship with an abusive, selfish person is never good for anyone and all it does is teach children that they should be grateful for what small crumbs of attention and engagement they get from people they love. How often on here do we see women asking if they're being unreasonable to expect their partners to be nice to them occasionally - one has to wonder what happened to make them be uncertain about whether this is a realistic expectation or not.

Having said that, rather than banning contact, I'm with other posters - methods to get money out of deadbeat dads should be far more stringent and consequences more significant. Remove drivers licenses, link to HMRC, issue criminal charges etc.

Don't weaponize your child. Go to cm.

Yeah, 50/50 would happen over my dead body.

CMS are inept, incompetent and ineffective. It’s very easy for feckless parents to avoid paying and CMS have no teeth to make them. Not sure why you’re convinced they’re the solution, going by the numerous stories on this thread and others like it of CMS doing nothing at all.

A parent who has to be forced by CMS to pay for their child’s food is a bad parent who has no place in that child’s life. How about we teach children from the start to have higher standards and not accept shitty crumbs of ‘care and affection’ from the men in their lives? Instead of damaging them by teaching them that someone who patently gives not a shit about them is still worthy of their time?

The problem with no maintenance, no contact is that the parents who don't see their kids might stop paying because they don't see the kids anyway.

I agree that contact with a crap parent isn't better than no contact with a crap parent but it's not for the other parent to decide. Too many kids are going through low level abuse- the too small clothes, not being fed properly etc are common stories on here and I'm not sure that the emotional damage done living like that outweighs not seeing their crap parent at all. It's also very common to hear about kids who stop going to contact because they are the age that judges deem them capable to stop contact. How many of those were tolerating crap because they were legally forced to and could have escaped earlier?

The non payment of CM should he treated more harshly. People ask how can NRP work without a license but they aren't paying with a license either. Yes to linking CMS and HMRC. If you tell CMS you earn £200pw then that is the figure that should be used when you try and get a mortgage or credit... I think that moving to a system where government pays RP then collects from NRP would lead to higher collection rates. It's scandalous that some parents are owed 5 figure sums and then the CMS ask them if they can write it off because they child is 18.

No one is saying that that is OK.

It's not about what the dad's 'right' is, it's about the kid's right. The issue with this kind of discussion is that too many people see it as mum vs dad and not about what's most beneficial to the child.