To be upset my hubby is insisting I go back to work full time even though ...

[Willowwisp]

We could manage me doing 4 days compressed into 3 with strict budgeting and if he went to the CSA again to get the 1/3 for OUR daughter taken from his salary?

Ok long story cut short coming up .... Hubby has ex-wife, has two children who I adore and get on famously with. Ex-wife is a complete loony who has made our lives, particularly mine a misery since we got together (they were split 3 years before we met). She thinks he is a personal bank for her to delve into when she see's fit, he has always paid for his children, never missed payments and pays half for everything, but she still wants more!

When we met he paid an outrageous amount of money to her (over £600), we wanted to get married, get mortgage, have a family of our own etc and he asked her to reduce money by £100, she said no (blamed me, she refers to me as the 'bitch' to his kids) so he went to the CSA and they reduced it for us, which was fair according to his salary.

We now have a daughter (8 mths) and I'm due to go back to work in 8 weeks, I can't bear the thought of it but know I have to, I want to go back part-time and he is insisting 'I have to get my head around full time' as we can't manage financially. Ex knows we could go to the CSA to get the other 1/3 taken of his salary for OUR daughter so she has been Mrs Nice since DD was born, calling him mate, sending pleasant text and it really fecks me off! He forgets that last year she told his kids he was a shit Dad!

He point blankly refuses to approach the CSA to see about getting the 1/3 taken off his salary, ex has massive 4 bed house, convertible car, works part time and lives a life of luxury, BUT I'm expected to struggle through. He say WE will have to cut down and DD doesn't need all the nice things I think she should have, like his kids do!

So AIBU to think my DH is being unreasonable in expecting ME to finance his ex-wifes luxury lifestyle and miss the most precious days of my daughters life to a CM?? all because he says we can't manage, when he knows what has to be done!

Any suggestions?

Sorry, current husband, not ex.

The amount goes down.

Who cares if they live in penury or not.

If he can't afford to keep paying the same amount then he has no business procreating. And if she, the second wife, doesn't like that she should find another man who doesn't come with kids.

so expat, if he was still married to the same woman, should he then not have any more chidlren, because the amount he could spend on each would be less?

Can I give an extreme example - I read about a case where this happened.

A man has a very short relationship with a woman who is desperate to get pregnant. He has no wish to have children with her but she makes sure she gets pregnant anyway. He has to pay for a child he didn't agree to having. He then goes on to have a family with someone else.

Should he really not be able to go on and have the family he wants rather than one he was forced into having?

That's not the same situation as the one outlined here, Nigh, so it's comparing apples and oranges because when the parents are divorced, they lose the advantages of having a two-parent home setting.

'A man has a very short relationship with a woman who is desperate to get pregnant. He has no wish to have children with her but she makes sure she gets pregnant anyway. He has to pay for a child he didn't agree to having. He then goes on to have a family with someone else.

Should he really not be able to go on and have the family he wants rather than one he was forced into having? '

Did she hold a gun to his head and force him to have sex with her and ejaculate inside her?

If not, then he was not forced into anything.

He made the stupid decision to forgo the condom.

And, as actions have consequences, he should pony up.

In the case I saw, the woman had emptied out the condoms IIRC. Mind you, I think it might have been on Kilroy or something similar.

That case, not where the condoms had been emptied.

emptied out the condoms? yeah, that sounds Jeremy Kyle.

a man KNOWS if he's using a condom or not.

sounds made up, tbh.

hey, sex carries risk.

but nowadays, no one wants to own up to that or take any personal responsibility for what they do, especially if it involves anything long-term.

Emptied out the condoms?
Give me a break
Maybe he should have got to know her better before he shagged her if she was such a psycho

I really have no time for this 'she trapped me' bullshit.

no I dont agree expat - the children from the first marriage have 2 parents, it is up to the resident parent to support them too.

expat, does that mean then that you wouldn't have any more kids with a new partner?? even if you both reaaaally want to? cos whats good for the goose is good for the gander as MIL says. DD was concieved with condom and pill and morn after pill. it happens. i don't mind people saying you shouldn't have more if you can't support them but it works both ways don't you think?

I think Xenia has talked a lot of sense on this thread.

I regard the CSA percentages as just ludicrous. How on earth can a father justify keeping 75% of his salary for himself if he has 3 children?

Or 25% with 5 as in our case not that he pays even 0.001%. Interesting anomalies. After the divorce he used to have his bank statements sent here for a while I suppose to show me his nearly £1m balance on deposit and the interest he was getting on that. The CSA look at your earnings, not investment income. So if he has nealry £1m from me and the interest on that that is not his "income" for CSA purposes to be assessed for child support. And I suppose if the deal had been he would pay for the then 5 school age children which is 25% of net earnings (our court consent order says whoever the children live with supports them and that whoever they live with I pay the school and university fees) he might then argue if later I was applying for CM via the CSA then he should have had more than £900k to allow for that continuing obligation perhaps. It's annoying to have to support him plus do everything with the children. Particulary he will get an 8 week school summer holiday. I take the children away for 2 weeks of that but otherwise have to work to keep us (and in a sense him) but he has only 2 of the children for 2 nights out of 8 weeks when he visits his parents. So it's not even as if I want money from him. Him looking after the children would help. I asked at one point if he would cover 7am - 8.15am on the days I had to leave early for meetings and he refused although it was entirely practical for him. He lives 5 minutes from here in a 5 bed detached unmortgaged house bought with the divorce settlement. But on no basis am I poor and unfortunate. I earn a lot and the children are here and seem to love to be with me etc so it's certainly not as bad as the situation of some fathers who have to pay a lot (and many have court orders which aren't just CSA 25% rates but include things like school fees payments, paying costs of the nanny (McCarney divorce etc) and yet are refused ever to see those children. That's a worse position than my 365 nights a year with the children and being a single single parent in that sense of no help or contact at all. He hasn't spoken to me for 5 years. Never contacted the older 3 in 5 years either. Silly him.

The first family/second family thing is very hard in lots of second marriages. What tends to happen is as people get older they earn more and you do get second families having more holidays than the first, going to fee paying schools when the first lot didn't and generally having a higher standard of living . Clearly part of the reason for that is that the mother left with the children didn't have a high paid career and may be it is her fault for giving up work etc (different debate for another thread) but I do think there should be an assessment (morally) what would these chidlren have had had we stayed together and I the father were now on £100k a year? If we stayed married would we together have funded them at university stage? Had we planned private schools at age 11+? Why should those plans change because I chose to have extra children I cannot afford?

Perhaps fathers who can't afford second families should just target as future wives women like me who earn a lot and can support their own children rather than a second lower earner. Indeed some do because they don't want a second expensive divorce. Certainly I am sure my husband has done a lot better through the marriage to me than he has made from his teaching. it seems an unearned bonus (unless tolerating being married to me for 19 years deserves a large pay off....)

The situation whereby the CSA look only at earned income and not investment income is just bonkers again.
I can fully see why you would feel aggrieved about supporting your ex, but as you say at least you have the huge bonus of the love and support of your children.
I was interested in your earlier comment about the man with the assets offshore as this is something that I have personal experience of at the moment. Men can be very clever...
The wider debate about first and second marriages is one I am not sure about as I can imagine being in both positions.

Don't underestimate the guilt that your DH may be feeling over being an absent father. My DP has always paid more that he is required to mainly so that money never becomes an issue and can never be thrown at him. It's more important that the children know they have a supportive father (and stepmother!) who recognise their moral and emotional obligations to them. It will pay off in the long run!

How can a father justify keeping 75% of his salary for himself? Well he needs somewhere to live so mortgage payments or rent, council tax, water, utilities, food, running a car, insurance. He can't live in a bedsit as he has 3 children who will need to stay with him so he needs a bigger property. He will need to pay for activities when they're with him and he might like to take them away on holiday. Of course what he earns, and exactly how much of his salary is spent on all these things will vary, but my point is that he will have some living expenses and need to have a life.

And it isn't always down to the parent with care to pay for all the day to day stuff. We have organised and paid for every birthday party, holiday and haircut that dsd has ever had, we buy shoes, clothes, uniform, give her pocket money, pay for out of school activities and school trips - the £200 ones, not just the daytrips. And all this is in addition to the maintenance.

But what I hate about these threads is how everything seems to boil down to money and how much a dad can or can't pay. There's more to being a dad than how fat your wallet is. Dsd hasn't been damaged by dd's arrival and the fact that there's less money to go round. Dd has enhanced her life - they adore each other - and given the option of holidays to Florida and lots of treats, or having a little sister, little sister would win hands down every time.

Certainly although it's within the same family I'd agree with surfermum. Having the twins 10 years after the other three obviously was expensive (all within the same marriage) but the benefits to the other children outweigh that hugely in all kinds of ways.

Sm might well pay for all those things but my ex has never done a singl ebit of any of that, never taken them on holiday for 5 years, never paid for a single item of uniform or clothes, even underpants, nothing, never mind the day to day things - like one went back to university today and nicely asked me if I'd pay for her petrol which I could have refused but I agreed and I spent part of the morning checking out the car, getting covered in oil (not working, not earning), buying the oil. Just one example of one cost of one morning which if say she spent equal time with each parent and this had been a weekend at her father's she might well have asked him to do and he might well have paid for.

I agree fathers need to house themselves but I think exwives feel that they spent 100% of their income on the children and yet the father with one child only has to spent 15%. I suppose one solution is children stay in one house and parents jointly pay the mortgage for that and come and go on their contact week, children aren't disrupted and parents are the ones having to move from pillar to post. I suppose that just shows there is no good solution other than people marrying for life. Divorce is still illegal in Malta by the way.

It's not easy on either side and I suppose a lot of single mothers (if they ever get the money or time when they work full time and have children 365 days a year) might one day be step mothers.

Xenia - divorce may still illegal in Malta but that doesn't stop people there shacking up with second husbands/wives and having children with them .

I suppose the blunt truth is that most people (men or women) can't afford to keep two families in equal comfort. Add into the mix complex emotions especially jealousy and you will always get these kind of problems.

Well, FWIW, I don't think a first family should see a reduced amount of money because of further children with a new partner.......

My DH has two children from a previous relationship and we agreed not to look to reduce payments........

At the end of the day, if his ex had another child, we wouldn't expect DH's contributions to go up to keep the 'other' child in a similar lifestyle to his own...... so why would we expect his contributions to go down because we decide to have a child....?

There are a lot of things I disagree with (like the fact his ex doesn't have to declare what my DH pays so she's still eligible for lots of benefits whereas we're not - even though the money is out of our accounts before it's earned!!) but his kids don't deserve less just because of our child......

Xenia, excuse the inquisitiveness but your divorce deal is a puzzle. Did you just throw money at the problem to get him out of your hair? Considering he doesn't contribute now, he seems to have taken a big chunk of equity.

I think we started with what the law says 50% each (when there is enough money for that to leave both sides reasonably financially sound). Then he wanted maintenance for life as I earned a lot more than he did although he does work full time at least 6.5 days a week. Then we negotiated over many months both paying lawyers for advice in the background and he got 100% of our life savings, 100% of my shares and then I remortgaged the house to pay the rest. I think he got about £870k. I have equity in the house. That's all and we've remortgaged 3 times including to pay off his last £300k tranche.

The lawyer said if it went to court which could take 5 years and cost £200k+ in legal fees and would have been an interesting test case (which of course means only idiots litigate in those circumstances) then I might have at the very lowest had to pay him 39% of the assets rather than the 60% or 59% he got. The difference between 39% and 59% given the risks and costs was not worth it. I would rather he had the money than lawyers. And of couse we could have sold the house and moved into a 3 bed semi or a flat and taken the children out of their schools so clearly part of the current problems with the large mortgage are my fault but the basic problem is the inequity which says opn divorce someone who hasn't earned it and hasn't been a housewife for 20 years and hasn't sacrificed anything for the marriage and not sacrificed a career gets that huge bonus because the person they married happened to do well.

In some ways the fact divorce law is so unfair on higher earners is a good thing because it puts people off divorcing and that is better for children. on the other hand it does put some people off marrying which may not be such a good result.

It sounds as if he got more than was reasonable or common in those circumstances but the lawyers would have had a field day and they do like to be paid for their fun.

Well, an interesting case study indeed. I think many people (I certainly know of some) pay the lawyers rather than the ex.

Thanks for answering.