Hello,
Popping this here for a bit of release and hopefully some advise although I have no idea where to start and will try to keep it short.
OH has been divorced for a few years now and has 3 children from the marriage.
As long as I have known him he has always has regular contact with the children and has paid child maintenance. There have been a couple instances where he has been late in paying or paid an instalments because of circumstances out of his control e.g when he lost his job during covid.
EX wife not happy with this took him to CMS and they reduced the payments he was making. He has paid each month until he was recently let go from his last role (business lost the contract) two months ago.
He just told me that if we don't pay her the missed payments then she will be dropping the kids on the doorstep Monday and they will be our responsibility e.g taking them to school, clubs and visiting friends which to me is blackmail.
For a bit of context - we have the kids every other weekend from a Friday to Sunday, two night a week for dinner and we also take then to an after school club one night a week. While with us on our weekends we take them to there extra curricular activities on the weekend. She has only ever dropped kids to us twice so we do all of the travel. Approx 45-1 hour each way.
We also have the children every half terms and for a minimum of two weeks over the summer holidays and the week between Christmas and New Year. OH wouldn't be able to go on holiday with me as he gives his ex all his annual leave entitlement for childcare. She wants me to give up some of my annual leave entitlement as he doesn't have enough to watch the kids. I've said no. Happy to help out but when needed but you're not having my annual leave.
Now she wants to take us to family court because 'we don't spend enough time with the children' . Last year she took us to small claims court for additional money and has said we've refused to pay for things like school trips and school uniforms. We haven't! The 50% of the trip was paid for even though she has told the children otherwise. For the School uniforms she's told us that we need to pay £700 for the 3 children. When we said we would be happy to pay 50% and could we see the receipts, she sent a photo of a pile of receipts. Happy to pay when we see the actual receipts so that I know what we're paying for (even I can chuck some receipts into a pile and say they are for something else).
Two days before Christmas advised us that she won't be sending the kids to us with any clothes and we needed to provide this when they are in our care so we had to do an emergency shop for at least a weeks worth of clothes for each child.
This is just some of a long list of issues that we are having to deal with and maybe IABU but ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Today it got to be too much.