To reflect that ‘some chase ex for their salary not child contribution

[Genuinethought]

using ‘ ExDh’ as example as most common situation

Wondering genuinely …

If I was to work out how much extra having a child live in my house ( accounting for the cost of having an extra room for them )
would likely not come to around £500/ £700 a month, what I generally hear is paid in CMS.

Reflecting on the ‘ french private school’ related trending post…

I have seen many people chase and chase for exDH salary….when In reality there is no way that they are spending £700 a month on having a child ( the exDH £500 and £200 contribution of the other parent- due to the fact that the child costs is supposed to be shared , (accounting for them having child more frequently )

I wonder further about this, particularly when people live in a mortgaged property that is going up in price, yet the parent that has paid towards that housing will never have a claim on it …

When I stop and think the cost of my child’s room
their food
clothes
activities
holidays
savings
I just can’t see how it totals £500-700 every 30 days?

when you separate you may loose the ‘ bonus’ of another’s potentially greater salary… continually trying to access it, beyond what is realistic , seems unfair
AIBU

And their portion of bills / rent / mortgage. Why are you not adding that to your total? If I didn’t have a child living with me I could get a room in a shared house, not pay £1350 on rent for 2 bedrooms. My bills would be significantly lower if I wasn’t paying for my daughters devices and the cost of a flat instead of a room. That’s why child maintenance does include this kind of stuff and not just the stuff you list

You don't have a teenage boy then?

Probably not but I wouldn’t have 2 beds if I didn’t need them here in the south east. I stayed here despite high prices (from up north) so kids could be near their dad. I’ve waited 13yrs now still paying high rent and I’ve got 2.5 more years before I can go back north and buy a house, finally stop renting. So yes their dad should contribute to that. He’s only started paying maintenance in the last 2 months despite being a high earner. He’s living in a 5 bed house, he’s been able to excel in his career more than me by going overseas and earning double his salary. He’s only paying 50% of what he should as he thinks like the poster of this thread. How can she cost more than £300 a month? It really angers me how people expect one parent to pick up all the slack, financial and parenting. God if I moved on and handed over £300 for my kids and the rest for myself I’d be minted.

Some women are paying £1000 a month in childcare so they can work and their ex is paying £300 a month in child support as the childcare doesn’t come into it. It’s completely unfair and posts like this don’t help. My ex thinj he can be the good guy, buying expensive laptops and phones and that’s enough of a contribution as he doesn’t want to give money direct to me. Absolute joke.

I’m afraid I couldn’t. Unless you’re not counting heating, car insurance, their activities and hobbies.

I would have no choice but to, as a single person earning £24k a year I could not afford anything else! Maybe a bedsit.

Yeah it’s a different matter when your rent is almost 50% of salary

My view is that the non resident parent should pay in proportion with their income, not just a sum that covers their share.

So if I earn £20K and exDH earns £40K and the costs of my child are £1200 a month he should be contributing £800.

If you earn more you should contribute more.

My nursery bill is over £600 per month for 2.5 days a week.

But this is only true if the payments are used purely for the child's expenses and if the other parent is also making their own reasonable contribution. Otherwise, there is subsidising happening.

Someone has to escort their kids on whatever it is the money is paying for. My ex goes on all sorts of holidays. Doesn't take the kids. I take the kids on holiday - I use a month's maintenance to do so, and yes, I include my ticket in that, because the kids can't exactly go to center parcs alone.

There's an easy resolution - the NRP becomes a joint RP by taking 50/50 care. Otherwise, yes, it's fair enough that the RP gets a certain amount of benefit from the NRP's maintenance - a larger home, holidays, family gym membership etc. since they are picking up the NRP's time slack for them.

Frankly, I can always make more money, I can't make more time though - so the RP's contribution is almost always undervalued.

What about if the RP earns more? Would the same apply?

If the RP earns more, then it makes no difference - they are doing the majority of the childcare, so their contribution is time. The NRP's contribution is money.

I'd say that was about right. About £60 per person per week so maybe a little tiny bit high.

Domestic work is still work. It's relevant because if someone didn't do it (mainly women) it would have to be paid for. Children can't bring up themselves. Whether by the state or whatever, domestic work is still work and has economic value.

What about activities, school lunches, school uniform, schools, school trips, haircuts, parties etc etc

Naaaah, we don't even spend £500 on 3 adults.

@00100001

We track our spends. Every single receipt goes into a spreadsheet. Our grocery average for the last 9 months is £724. That includes non food items such as toilet roll, kitchen roll (but not much!). We track pet food separately so it doesn't include that.

This is for a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 teens - teens eat as much as adults, perhaps more).

We do 90% of our shopping at Lidl and cook 80% of our meals from scratch.

This covers 3 meals a day plus the constant snacking teens do (and actually one of our teens has been told by the paediatrician to snack more to put weight on!)

I'm genuinely impressed that you don't even spend £500 on 3 adults! I honestly think that £724 isn't that bad.

We spend around £70 per week.

Not entirely sure what you're buying to be spending £180 a week?

I cannot get on board with dads should contribute the bare minimum. I couldn’t bring up any of my children on 500 a month x 2. I’d pay more than that for school and out of school care alone, then I guess I should be solely responsible in your book for football, piano, swimming, birthday presents for the parties every week. Haven’t so much as paid for a loaf of bread yet. I don’t know where you get the chutzpah to come onto mumsnet and tell women if your ex is paying a penny more than half the cost of feeding his child then you’re bleeding him dry. How many of these hypothetical dads have 50/50? Split the days off work for sick children, the late starts because holiday programs start later, thw long evenings trying to get them to bed and then at 10pm you can start clearing dinner and catching up on washing? But god forbid the ex pays enough to cover a milkshake out.

What people don’t seem to get on here is that NRPs generally have standing costs too. Most NRPs have their kids overnight and bedrooms, mortgages, council tax, internet, phone bills, the cost of a bigger car and holidays, Disney+, Netflix, furniture for children, toys and bikes, and so on, aren’t pro-rata’d when the children aren’t present. School uniform and big ticket items are often split 50/50 too.

On a salary of 30k, having the children three nights a week, a NRP would take home under 2k a month of which £285 or about 15%, would go to the RP. Of course £285 doesn’t pay for half the children’s costs, but it’s not supposed to.

Well what parents spend on their children depends on how rich the parents are, right?

So I spend about £1100 in the supermarket per month for me DH and DS, mostly on food. You perhaps don’t. I spend £7000 per term on private school plus activities etc, you probably don’t.

That’s fine, we’re in different financial positions. I don’t send DS on the three annual overseas school trips, but some parents in our school do.

What your question is really about is this: where two people have a child and parent A has a much higher income than parent B, and they get divorced and the child lives with parent B, how much of parent A’s income should go to the child?

It’s a very common situation because a mother’s career is massively damaged by having a child and the dad’s career is not. Yet, on divorce, the child usually stays with the mother as she’s done most of the care. Does that mean that the dad gets to swan off living a high-income lifestyle and building a new wealthy family, yet his first child is expected to live in a much less privileged way? No. The child is entitled to a share of the dad’s wealth, and if the mother doesn’t want to spend that much on the child’s food/ clothes/ recreation/ holidays she should put it in a savings account for the child to access when they’re older.

YABU.

That’s ridiculous. He should pay more because he earns more (if he has the children less than 50%) but there’s nothing stopping you getting a better job. Plus his take home salary would be nothing like double yours on those amounts.

If your ex sees his children, especially for overnights, he’s paying for them in his home as well.

That’s ridiculous. He should pay more because he earns more (if he has the children less than 50%) but there’s nothing stopping you getting a better job. Plus his take home salary would be nothing like double yours on those amounts.

Except that commonly, the childcare burden primarily falls on the mother during the marriage (one of the contributors to the split often), so her earning capacity/experience has been impacted. Then if the NRP has the children less than 50% the RP's childcare costs are higher, and ability to work are lower as she has responsibility for the children.

From my experience, what's stopping women getting a better job once they've found a job that's fitting in around the kids, is that they can't risk that the next job will be flexible enough, so stay put rather than move. Especially if the father of your children continues to prioritise himself and his job over the children by dropping contact whenever it's inconvenient for him.