to ask if literally anyone feels they are paid adequate child maintenance? I'm feeling desperate

[hadenlugff]

Just that really. I’m paid 570 but it won’t even cover half of the nursery fees let alone wrap around care and everything else.

Not only that but it’s not even guaranteed so I can’t rely on it… and that’s fucking awful as I should be able to have some
assurance that I won’t be left entirely to raise a child that is half someone else’s.

I know people have it worse, it’s not a race to then bottom. I’m just dreading dc starting nursery in autumn and dont know how I will manage. Is anyone happy with what they get for maintenance? Ever? It feels so shit.

Well said!

I've done the vast majority of the child rearing, with no practical or financial input from their father. My mental and physical health has suffered as a result.

But according to society I'm the "bad" person. Fuck that. I'm a freaking hero.

I'm sure you're right, all of that must have been because of me. My bad, for being such an awful human being that living with me turned somebody into a gambling addict and philanderer. Charging hotel stays with young women to MY credit card while I looked after two babies, one of whom was so sick she was in and out of hospital by ambulance. And him later moving on to those even younger. Him becoming a paedophile must be because I was just such an unbearable wife.

I don't know what sort of misogyny brainwashing course you went on but it appears to have been very effective.

It MUST be the woman's fault. It couldn't possible be that someone who walks out on their wife and children is actually just an horrific person. Poor man. Let's all weep for his plight.

@taxpayer1 you really are deeply unpleasant aren't you? Which part of @IAmCinderella's post do you have a problem with? Could you explain why you think men SHOULD be allowed to do what her and mine and so many others have done? Even if we were all awful bitches, that still wouldn't excuse them abandoning their kids, to all intents and purposes. Or would it? In your view?

I don't see any logic in setting the bar so high. People can't pay what they don't have if someone paid £350 and that was all they could afford I'd accept that it is unfair you are absolutely right. You can't get blood out of a stone though.

All they could afford based on what? Like with tax, the provision of 50% of your child's living costs should not be optional. Your disposable income to fund the rest of your life is what is left AFTER you've done that. If that makes you not have a very nice lifestyle, tough. Why should a single parent who is doing all of the work of actually raising the children have to do that and also pay the other parent's share of costs? Don't like the idea of paying your half of your child's upbringing? Then don't have children.

If paying what they should means they can only afford to rent a room in an HMO then tough, that's what they need to do. They can do a part time degree or retrain to earn more. They have plenty of time on their hands, unlike the parent doing the parenting. Perhaps they should focus on earning more rather than starting new relationships and having yet more children. The idea that they should be able to say "oh, I'd be a bit poor if I paid my share so it's fine for me not to", and that society thinks this is acceptable is vile and needs to change.

The issue isn't setting the bar too high. It's that people like you set it far, far too low.

How should it work? @taxpayer1

Are you one of the minimum wage partners that sacrificed your stellar career and want to be supported for life as if you have any option?

I'm just one of the boring ones who was earning more than my DH when we met, but now find myself despite his enthusiastic and convicing cries of 50/50 in the divorce, shouldering the vast majority of the childcare and it looks more like 5/95 if the wind is blowing in the right direction and he doesn't have to be anywhere more fabulous that month.

I'm getting the barest minimum child support, while he prioritises luxury holidays without the kids, new cars, £50k campervans, and renovates his new five bedroomed detatched house to exacting standards with the money he conveniently sidestepped in the divorce and that he continues to squirrell away due to him being self employed. Either way, he doesn't even give the kids pocket money.

I don't want to be supported for life. I would like him to help me to support our kids. That would be a great start.

He didn't leave me because I hate everything. I left him because he was a selfish dickhead and he has proved me right ever since.

I've bitten my tongue with you and a couple of other posters. I think have really jumped the gun.

I am a single parent myself I have no horse in the race to be pulling others down. Why exactly are you down my throat? Perhaps you should of picked a better father?

Why did you continue to have multiple kids to someone who is so immoral.

Don't be lecturing me about morals. I don't get the most money but I am interested in my Son seeing his father also so whilst your spouting about a shared roo that would mean NO overnights in my case which would then mean I couldn't do my 2nd job!

You and others need to try and see the bigger picture. I am not asking you to agree. However I am entitled to my opinion so back up!!

Throwing your personal digs!

@Flowersun6 please don't do the "you should have chosen better" thing. It's been done to death on here but many of us had children in stable settled marriages with good guys who changed when the reality of parenting hit or another woman happened by. I actually agree that it's not great for an NRP not to have private accomodation as it makes overnights impossible but there's a fine line between that and a 5 bedroom house while the RP gets diddly. And absolutely the nrp should use the extra time they have to maximise earnings or take on more of the day to day.

Well perhaps the other poster shouldn't start telling me about my bar being too low and how I am the problem.

Fair enough...I think that it's hard enough being in our position with idiots like @taxpayer1 making nasty digs. We shouldn't be starting on each other.

I was talking about @IAmCinderella to be bloody Frank. What utter cheek.

@BibbleandSqwauk I did a similar calculation based on £10 per hour which is what I was paying a babysitter at the time. I deducted his access time (not much). Deducted school hours. Took the remaining figure and divided it by two. Was about £22,000 per year for his half that I was doing for him.

@Flowersun6 yes I do honestly
Think that. I had to persuade him to move to London. I talked him into applying for a promotion when he wasn't sure or confident enough. I supported him with my (then higher than his) wages whilst he undertook professional qualifications that enabled him to climb higher at work. I looked after our two children from birth til, well now, to enable him to work the hours he needs to work, at the huge detriment of my own career. At one point I moved abroad to somewhere remote, with two small kids in tow, for two years, for his job. Without any of those things he wouldn't be earning anywhere near what he now earns.

I don't touch any of his bonuses. I don't even ask for everything he technically should be paying according to Child maintenance calculator. But in light of the above, as I said, I think the maintenance is fair.

Another one who gets paid exactly zero 🙋‍♀️

I get £250 a month for two children, based on the percentage that cms gave when we split. It's nowhere near enough for what they cost, its equivalent to £33 a week for each child. My ex is reasonable in that he will go halves on things like clubs and uniform at the beginning of the school year, school trips etc. But that doesn't amount to much over a year, plus I top up the uniform as and when they need it and don't ask for more for that.

Does anyone think I'd be within my rights to ask him to review the maintenance now that it's been 5 years? The cost of living has obviously gone up and I know he's changed jobs so his salary won't be the same as it was 5 years ago. All I'd want is to apply the same percentage to his wages now. Am I being unreasonable?

@popsypretty of course not. Go through CMS and they'll do a yearly review, or ask him for figures, with payslips and use the online calculator. 20% is pretty pathetic anyway but it's a start.

@popsypretty how often does your ex see your DC? Can you not increase his time? You should have yearly reviews to show your exs earnings each year it states this.

I'm paid £100 he has just taken him on holiday for a week and buys him trainers when he needs them. He's self employed so not much I can do. It's not worth my own mental health trying to talk to him about why he needs to help financially support his son more

@defi precisely no point tieing yourself up over money. It's absolutely draining.

I agree, 20% is pathetic. Imagine if the resident parents only spent 20% of their income on their kids.

He has them every other weekend fri after school until Sunday evening. Sometimes it's Saturday/Sunday. It was more often when we first split, he is having them less now by his choice, not mine. Increasing overnights isn't an option as he lives an hour away from us so wouldn't work with school.

Also currently we have an arrangement between ourselves, we just used the cms 20% figure to work out what he should pay when we first split. He pays me by standing order, we've never had to involve the cms thankfully. Unlike my eldest child who gets £2.60 a week for her upbringing. But that's another story 😂

I have three three teens and they get nothing in child maintenance from their father who earns more than 250,000 / year. He has them one overnight a year and he sees them for a couple of hours every few months.

CMS have been useless . It’s taken them 9 months to put him on Collect and pay and hes still paying nothing. Sigh

I can fault my ex for many things but not this. He earns far less than me but does a direct debit every month to me for very close to half of all costs, despite having DD 50/50. Just short of £1000 a month. It's a huge portion of his earnings, which basically pays for almost half of her private school fees. (He could have argued she be removed when we divorced because it was too much in our new circumstances, or could have argued that I should cover more because I earn more, but he didn't). I pay the other half of fees and a bit extra by covering other major stuff like school trips/ clubs/ uniform upgrades etc.

Then on top of that, he pays for her daily expenses when with him, and for holidays he takes her on. I know he has almost nothing left at the end of each month, but he has always been clear he sees it as his duty to pay for half of his child's costs, and has stretched to give her the stability of staying in the school she was in when we divorced.... and I really respect that.

Not all men are terrible in these ways.