Cms payments and extras

[Cherry55]

Mumsnetters, some sanity please.

I get cms payments for my children from exh. He's tight as they come so I get the minimum.

Kids are small amd payments are fine (£550 pm) but I know teens and older children get more expensive so am keen to set up some status quos to make future life easier. He has then EOW and 1 day a week alternate weeks.

I don't want to get into a "well you get cms at least" or "that's more than I get" discussion. This is the minimum he can pay and father's should cover costs. He's behaved abhorrent through divorce and there's little give and take.

Now I've had little luck with school uniform, but have managed to get him to share school trip costs.

We are at stalemate with mobile phone bills as oldest is due one. I think he should pay 50% monthly costs for sim deal.

Should this come out of cms or is this a shared extra? I'm.not asking for 100% but 50% as I think that's fair.

What about sharing uniform/orthodontics/school trips/school lunches/school bus pass? University costs?!

YABU - all costs should come from CMS payments

YANBU - These should be 50%

In an ideal world you'd be able to come to an amicable arrangement about this sort of thing, but since you're having to go to the CMS to get anything at all it sounds highly unlikely you'll get much traction on asking him to split any more costs.

So if he says "take it out of the maintenance" there's no way of enforcing additional payments, unless his earnings have increased and that information hasn't been committed to the CMS maybe?

School lunches is the responsibility of the parent that has them that day so that would be on you.
The phone you can ask for but he wouldn't be unreasonable to say no.
As for the rest of the stuff listed he should go half's on but many refuse

How are your children small but also old enough for a mobile phone?

Agreed - this!!

My DSDs sim deal is £8 a month. My friend users Sky as there's roll over to the next month.

All he is legally obliged to pay is CMS. Anything else is a bonus.

£550 is a pretty decent amount per month. Your ex isn't obligated to fund extras. But as your arugment with sharing costs 50/50 then you should also be spending 550 towards the upkeep of your dc aswell.

Same question re phones… Children don’t need a phone and when they do need one later on a Nokia is fine!

I pay £6 a month for monthly sim for my child. Phone I would get for birthday or Christmas or old one of ours.

One child just about to start secondary so mobile phone time

Cms amount for 2 children BTW

As eldest is starting secondary, I can already see costs escalate (uniform, travel, trips, school lunch....)

Name change fail op?

Yes name fail change but no stress, some glitchy thing happening with MN tonight

50% of a sim monthly deal seems a bit tight, surely that’s < £5?

@Cherry55 you've had a name change fail

I think the amount you are getting is really reasonable!! You should pay the extras

Surely with you matching his contribution, £1,110 is more than enough to pay the phone contract from?

My ex was so tight that when ds shoes broke during a two week holiday with him, he bought him a new pair and took it off the cm the next month. He would also itemise every ice cream, bag of chips, accommodation and would present it to me when he dropped ds home and tell me how lucky I was that he wasn’t claiming it back.

I always paid for everything on top, school uniform etc.

I don’t think he bought ds a single thing in over a decade. He would even say the christmas and birthday presents that I bought were from both of us as “they technically are, I give your mother lots of my money.” Ds would get nothing from him at all.

Wanker.

(Ds is an adult now and thinks the sun shines out of his arse, despite everyone telling me it would be the opposite).

It's not necessarily the sim card amount is the precedence for coving all costs going forward.

As I said, he earns well as it's the cms minimum so don't want to get into the argument for the amount he pays as this is different for everyone.

Surely 550 from df and 550 from yourself as you are equally financially responsible should be enough to fund two children at £1100 a month.

The whole point of going to the cms is to take the battle out of finance.

The cost of a phone contract is really not worth arguing over.

You have £550 a month plus half of school trips..Try and focus on the positives. Battling over every penny which ignoring morally - legally you are not entitled too cause animosity. Over what splitting an£8 bill ?

@Kevinyoutwat God that's hideous sorry
Bastard.

Starlightstarbright1 love the username 🙂

Name change driving me nuts. Apologies!

Yes this is a small amount but knowing my ex a £5 sim deal I pay for will = you pay for £5000 braces later on

You are aware you are equally financially responsible regardless if your female.