To say no to OH increasing child maintenance

[Nastyurtium]

Need a sanity check here.

OH pays maintenance at CMS level to his ex for their three children. We have them every other weekend and half the holidays and provide everything they need whilst they’re here, as well as paying half of school uniform and trip costs.

I earn double OH’s salary and pay around 75% of our household costs. He is paying off joint debt from his first marriage; I pay for the children’s holidays, clothes and hobbies whilst with us. We live ninety minutes from the children (his ex moved after the split and this is as close as we can be with OH working in his field - if we weren’t worried about proximity, we could both earn double living further away in the UK).

His ex has been commenting a lot on the children costing more as they grow up (they’re primary age), the cost of living going up and the fact that she’s had another baby so can’t work as much, and I’m expecting a formal request for more maintenance money soon. We have a cordial relationship. She has a partner, who is self-employed and she works some hours for his business. I don’t know a lot about their finances but they take more holidays than us and seem to have a similar lifestyle, albeit in a cheaper region. We’d happily have the children for more of the holidays or even full-time but this has always been refused.

AIBU to just say no? If OH was paying half our living costs, it’d be his choice, but he isn’t and has nothing left at the end of each month, so realistically any increase would be coming from my salary.

I know their living costs will have increased a lot since the baby arrived because they’ve moved to a bigger house which is further away from school and where he works, so they’ll have increased rent, household bills and fuel costs. Probably at least £500 more each month, plus buying any baby stuff they need.

I don’t think they’d be eligible for any more benefits, but could be wrong?

As expected she has now emailed to ask if we can up the maintenance to £500, citing the cost of living crisis. We haven’t replied yet but it’s going to be a no. If there’s anything the children need, then of course we’ll pay for it. But OH can’t afford to pay more and I… Just don’t want to, frankly.

Wow. So many posters pulling apart the ex, who hadn't even asked for an increase!

The children are the responsibility of both parents, that goes for all expenses, childcare and looking after them IMO.

I still feel a bit guilty about it, because I could afford to pay the extra, but this thread has made me see that’s irrational and it’s not my responsibility. They’ll still have a good standard of living at their mum’s, just probably fewer holidays.

Thanks for everyone’s thoughts and opinions.

Good for you OP. Do not give anymore. Her and her partners life choices are not your households problem. If he could comfortably afford it then yes! Pay to your hearts content. But he can't without it affecting you and that's not fair. Has he tried to make you feel guilty at all?

Thank you. And no, quite the opposite: he’s been expecting a request since she announced the pregnancy and he feels guilty that I spend on the children when they’re here. It’s me that’s the soft touch when it comes to his ex!

Well I'm glad your getting tougher 😊

Your DP should reply reiterating how much he’s actually paying every month (£400 CM plus £400 towards their shared debt), i.e., £800 a month.

He could increase the CM if she’d take some responsibility for the shared debt. 🤔

The point is though that he does pay all the extras… he could just pay child maintenance and nothing else (like most other Dads do!

I think the biggest problem I am having is the idea that a SAHM needs to pay off debt that was household debt (as in, not her gambling or buying expensive junk for herself, etc) when she had no income during the time they were married. That debt was incurred with the full knowledge that she would not pay for them. Claiming anything else is ridiculous. Especially when we are talking about furniture, clothes, textiles, pans, etc.
I could see the car if it was their only car as that would mean it was expected that both would use it. But I would also not agree to it being 50/50 since her primary need for the car is for the children so he should cover the amount of the car that is for child use when they are not with him. If they had two cars, once again, that is his debt alone because he lost nothing giving her a car for the kids and it is ridiculous to say that a SAHM with zero income was ever expected to pay for this debt.

If we go down your road of thinking then we end up in the same place anyway ie. The money is going to pay for things his children and ex and the OM all benefit from in their household. So he is indeed paying £800pcm towards his children in one household, paying half of bigger extra costs on top, and then paying for them in his own household too. So we can leave this idea that his children only cost him £400pcm firmly in the bin as they are costing their father alone north of £1k easily, plus their mother's and OPs financial contribution.

People keep saying this, unfathomably - HE doesn't pay any extra, let alone "all the extras" - the OP does. All he does is pay off HIS debt, the debt incurred when married to a SAHP with no income - ie that he was always, and legally is, still, responsible for.

Why the plaudits?

it is still a problem. He didn't have to incur that debt. He could have gotten another job, a different job, a different car or cheaper furniture. We can claim that the ex did it all her own, or that she bought all the stuff her own, but it doesn't line up with what OP has told us about how her OH and the ex act. Except for perceptions of trips that she has no clue of the actual cost and a car that was purchased during the first marriage with OH, OP has only mentioned spending by the mom that would, frankly, make her look cheap. As in, she doesn't like to spend money on things. And if she was running debt up on her exes name, she would be running debt up on her new husband's name.
Then, OP has told us that her OH is bad with money. Now, where I am from, bad with money means they spend what they don't have. OP has not mentioned any new debt on the part of the ex. She somehow knows everything else about the woman's life, so presumably she would know this.
Much like another poster, I would bet that if everyone involved had a sit down with the debts, the OP would find that a lot of the purchases made were made by her OH.

It was the mum who ran up the debt before they split. The father just handed over his wages and she paid all the bills. She was the one in control of the finances.

@MzHz @HamBone @whumpthereitis It might be all he can afford but what I’m saying is that OP shouldn’t pretend it is enough and that the ex is greedy for asking for more. There are many direct and indirect costs of having 3 children and £400 a month doesn’t cover it. The new partner will be paying more to these kids. I know that’s what happens in these situations but whatever way you look at it none of us could raise 3 kids on £400 a month.

Paying all the bills doesn't mean spending on credit cards. They are not the same thing. You don't have to be in charge of finances to rack up debt.

The ex wife and her affair partner that she lives with should be contributing £400 too. £800 is adequate for 3dc. OP pays for expensive things (even though they’re not her dc) so the ex wife doesn’t have this cost.

The ex wife should get a job. Is her affair partner contributing to day to day costs, especially as they have another child on the way. I’d also be suspicious of whether the third dc is actually OP’s DP’s considering his ex was having an affair whilst she was pregnant.

Maybe she should have factored all that in before running off with her affair partner and getting pregnant again then.

I think the situation warrants further consideration. The cost of living IS rising, and the greater burden of support will be on the primary carer. You want to have a child with this man. What do you want your family’s relationships to be like in 20 years’ time?

The debt that they incurred together is separate, and as their arrangement prior to your relationship with him was that she would be a SAHM, she did not have the opportunity to save to cover half of the debt. He was the breadwinner, she raised the children and did not earn money, so he isn’t paying ‘her half’ of the debt. He’s
paying a debt that there cannot have been any initial expectation that she would have paid at all, since her time was going towards the unpaid labour of raising children. She gave the labour (and is still bearing the majority of it as the children grow) so it is only right that he honours his side of the agreement they must have made when she was a SAHM.

He’s paying about £4.40 per day, per child, for his former partner to raise them. The time spent every other weekend and on half of the school holidays, plus half-payments for uniforms etc., raises this only marginally. Children remain a daily expense in both the primary & secondary homes whether or not they are physically present on any given day.
There will be a small two-days-per-fortnight reduction for the cost of food and possibly for entertainment (if money is spent regularly on entertainments for the children) in the primary household, but the washing machine will probably still be running on catch up, and though the bedrooms may be child-free when they are with you, the rooms
are still there, and still need to be paid for. I expect that the bulk of the children’s belongings (toys, clothes, books) are kept in the primary home. The primary residence is subject to greater wear, tear,
repair & replacement of whitegoods.

It’s reasonable that the primary carer of 3 children would have wanted to move to be closer to her family when her relationship with your partner broke down: she would have wanted and needed the emotional and practical support of her family. To make her work actually pay, some free family childcare would have been an inevitable need financially.

You chose a man with 3 children. You want to have a family with him. That means committing to his 3 pre-existing children as well as the child you hope to have. Who pays is less relevant than the need to ensure that the children feel equally cared for by both sets of parents.

he’s not expected to pay the full cost for raising them though, is he? She is also responsible.

You chose a man with 3 children. You want to have a family with him. That means committing to his 3 pre-existing children as well as the child you hope to have. Who pays is less relevant than the need to ensure that the children feel equally cared for by both sets of parents.

No, it doesn’t. She has neither financial nor parental responsibility towards them. She is no more liable to pay for them than you are.

She chose to have another child during the cost of living crisis. If she’s struggling she needs to look to her current partner, or go back to work.

@whumpthereitis Definitely I wouldn’t expect him to pay the full amount for his kids and the ex’s pension contributions and compensation for lack of earnings and career progression she’s incurring but I would argue that might be fairer. What I am saying categorically is that £4.40 per child per day is not enough to raise children and if the ex paid the same the kids would have £8.80 to live on. After school and breakfast club where I am is £18.50 per day per child, nursery is higher and that’s before you buy anything else.

@TwinsAndTiramisu It’s actually £4.40 per day each child is getting. If it was £55 per day I wouldn’t have commented on this thread. For the record I still don’t think OP should pay but I don’t think she should encourage her ex to see this as enough for 3 kids and that his ex is being unreasonable.

You chose a man with 3 children. You want to have a family with him. That means committing to his 3 pre-existing children as well as the child you hope to have. Who pays is less relevant than the need to ensure that the children feel equally cared for by both sets of parents

You are wrong about this. That level of commitment is entirely optional and down to the individual.

There are nuclear families that have to make do on less than that. It has to be enough if no more is available, and in this case no more is available without OP incurring the costs.

I’m not sure how it would be fairer, considering she wanted, and wants, to be a sahm. She bears the responsibility for her own choices in regards to that.

If the father had zero contact with the children and didn't pay anything over and above the basic CM, you would be quite right about the £4.40 figure (assuming the £400pcm would be the same if no contact, which it would not).
As you are basing it on a made up story, it's a meaningless figure of no value to the discussion whatsoever.