To think this is scandalous yet in plain sight because the patriarchy has no shame

[Webjisroommate]

A year ago I separated from my DD’s father and she was in the middle of her first year of nursery. He paid the cms amount every month, without fail. This was 360 a month, even though I was left to pay over 1,300 on nursery fees alone. Obviously the situation has now changed slightly with the hours but his 360 contribution is quite literally nowhere near half her costs. I have spoken about this with other mum friends and have learned that 360 is actually pretty fortunate! Some women are being paid less than 200 and others have to chase cms when their ex is self employed. I was not aware of any of this before having Dd.

My career is now hugely clipped as I am doing 95% of childcare while ex sees her a day a week… the day I use mostly to clean and get the house in order to start the week again. And yes, I suggested 50/50, he didn’t want that.

I honestly feel like this is a huge joke player on women in plain sight while nothing is actually done about it?! I also can’t fathom how HMRC can chase tax from the self employed but Cms can’t chase these men to pay for their children. It’s a disgrace. Why is this allowed to happen?!

I agree- passports frozen, driving not allowed etc. make life very very inconvenient until the men pay up. And it cannot be that hard to calculate I’m sorry it can’t. For PAYE earners it should be easy (and should be higher than it is!) and for self employed there needs to be a better way.

It's not just about the day to day expenses but the massive hit the resident parent takes on earning capacity, pension contributions and promotion opportunities. Early starts, late finishes, overnight trips, management roles all fine for the NRP who can just carry on as though child free. The RP would have to source and pay for 24/7 care such as a live in nanny. Unless they are extremely well compensated, it's not going to happen. You can't realistically rebalance that but it should be acknowledged and the NRP at the very least made to pay a genuinely useful amount.

So by people, you specifically mean women then? Do you think men being forced to pay a proper amount for their children and be involved in the parenting, wouldn’t put men off, so the only answer is to punish women and children with poverty?

I agree re the American system. One thing they’ve got right (I’m sure there’s other things but I don’t know everything about their systems)

I think they can go to jail if they keep not paying too.

They don’t want the cost moved to the tax payer, I believe, is why they have a strict system - which makes sense really.

There is also the issue of some women not wanting their ex to be involved at all. The ex was either cruel to her or their child/children. There are too many stories on here of men leaving all the grunt work to women eg not feeding washing or even spending time when they do have their child but it's too difficult to prove or as someone pointed out the mother is too damn busy to fight with the ineffectual system that is currently in place.

I knew a woman who split with her husband and went so far as to go and clean his house before he moved in so that his children wouldn't spend their time in an unclean house/bed.

Men won't change the system because they have it too good. Only women collectively can do that, but as I know from experience a female dominated environment can't and oftentimes won't mobilise because they have so much else going on in their lives.

The whole system stinks.

I was a teen when I got with my ex who was in his 30s.

Coercive relationship (which turned violent eventually) so I had 4 dc with him.

I went to a refuge with 4 young dc, he moved on, I put in a claim, he went part time to look after her kids, and claimed financial responsibility for them, so I got around £20 a week for my 4 dc while they made financial arrangements in their best interests.

I can't work now as my dd has a disability and needs constant 1:1 care, so fuck knows what my future will be.

At least the men are OK though I suppose, that's the main thing.

It will never change though because the tossers in the government would all be nailed for more child support, and they aren't going to financially disadvantage themselves.

Not many jobs actually require this though....the majority of jobs are 9-5 - no sacrifice is required. But you do have to have childcare and pay for it and take a hit financially and have a lower standard of living then you'd otherwise be used to

If you’re the lower earner it’s really better to get married first before having kids. That way there are more ways to ensure you’re not left with all the financial responsibility.

It's utterly disgusting.

I volunteer for grant giving charity and all the single mums we help are amazing and tenacious and aren't getting a penny from their ex husbands/partners, who in most cases were abusive and this is effectively a new firm of abuse.

And yet you see women on here encouraging their new partners to drop hours at work or become stay at home dad's so they don't have to pay as much /any maintenance . There are women complicit in this too

It's utterly disgusting.

I volunteer for grant giving charity and all the single mums we help are amazing and tenacious and aren't getting a penny from their ex husbands/partners, who in most cases were abusive and this is effectively a new firm of abuse.

And yet you see women on here encouraging their new partners to drop hours at work or become stay at home dad's so they don't have to pay as much /any maintenance . There are women complicit in this too

I don’t have kids and was naive to how ingrained the attitude of men shouldn’t have to pay for their kids when they leave is.

Over the years I’ve dated a few different men who work in the same industry and have all worked for the same man who is a beloved household name. Affable chap, family orientated.

Each of the men I dated all told me a version of the same story - as soon as a man announced he’d split from the mother of his children (and one of these guys had a kid so experienced it directly) the boss man would announce ‘don’t worry, we’ll pay you cash in hand and you won’t have to give that bitch a penny because you won’t officially work here, win win’. None of these guys has ever worked with each other, only ever directly with boss man.

The guys without kids thought it was shocking but funny. The guy with a kid left because he was so disgusted at what seemed to be an accepted practice in this wider industry.

Most of the time that makes very little difference. If you are both equal earners (as I was) then they skip away with only the CMS to ineffectually keep control of them

They could attach earnings and deduct from benefits, like they do if you don't pay your council tax.

If the paternity is established there is no valid reason whatsoever why they can't do that.

A child is the responsibility of both parents equally and the OP is right.

This is another thing that women should not have to fight for but are going to have to.

Yes, my ex worked for a very highly regarded and well known character and as soon as we split his salary dropped. But his boss bought him a car and my son has told me over the years about the envelopes full of cash that would be lying around (my son didn't know what that meant, he was just fascinated). There are lots of men who facilitate these men.

What's worse is I left my ex because he was abusive and his boss was one of the very few people who witnessed some of the abuse.

The little amount of money that men appear to want to contribute towards children makes me constantly depressed about the male sex. I am the only divorced woman I know who isn't struggling and it is partly because my ex had the children for 50% of the time and I was able to work at a high level. Now they are older, the children (young adults) have gravitated towards me, but that doesn't impact on earnings. So, when getting divorced, don't fight to have the children more than the ex - use the time without the children to build friendships and work. It is very tough at the beginning letting the children go, but it does prevent poverty further down the line.

My advice does not hold if the men are abusive.

It's all a symptom of the power imbalance within society; the men generally have the money and allow women to do all the underpaid or unpaid care work. Every time I see a woman taking a teaching assistant job, I now see it as the state taking advantage of women.

Teaching, nursing, anything shift related, corporate jobs all require all or some of the things I listed. That's just off the top of my head. It's not about "standard of living" so much as fairness of opportunity. My ex fucked off with ow. We do the same job but he now earns more than me because he is unfettered by childcare and once he's paid his CMS, to the penny and no more, that's him done. New laptop needed? I pay maintenance. New hobby requiring fees and kit? I pay maintenance. Growth spurt, adult sized shoes and clothing, school trip related to GCSE..nope, all from the same set amount.

If hr's paying the CMS amount without fail whats the issue?

What exactly do you want?

Money that he hasnt got?

Exactly. And if they wriggle out of paying or "can't pay" (due to magically no longer needing to work or deciding to be a stay at home parent for their next partner) then CMS could secure a charge over their property for the debt, like they do with council tax. Or it could be a prison sentence for non payment like it is with council tax. If it was seen as important there are lots of mechanisms that could be used

I totally agree with you. If I was in charge 🤪 I would change the CMS contribution for children under reception age from non-resident parents as being a minimum of the cost of providing 3.5 days of nursery care in the local area. Each local authority could determine what the average price is in their area. A non-resident parent would have a pro rata reduction if they are providing the childcare one or more of those days. There would also be pro rata reduction if the family is entitled to free/subsidised childcare. It would actually need to be paid and the non-resident parent could set it up through the payroll system. Any amount left owing at the end of the tax year would be picked up in the tax return and would be subject to interest and penalties like tax is.

Equivalent arrangements would apply for school age children for before/after school care and school holidays.

I do think that if CMS affected men equally, this is how it would have been set up.

The CMS are a joke. My case is arrears only now as my daughter is 22 and my ex owes thousands. Anyway, he finally paid in a measly few quid a couple of months ago and the CMS kept it for themselves!! They said that the system had automatically allocated the monies to his unpaid charges (the 20% extra the NRP pays on top of the maintenance) as that was the oldest debt!!

So, now, I’m not only fighting him for money but them too. When he does actually deign to pay in anything I have to watch out for the CMS nicking it as they deem their charges to be higher priority 🤬🤬🤬

They grandly say that they care about the welfare of children but they don’t, they really don’t.

That's a good strategy and that's how I used my child free time, but my ex was abusive and horrible so I didn't want the children there any more than the court insisted they had to be and they eventually refused to go for even their court ordered time because of how he was with them. And I quite rightly supported that.

The system is really shocking! I didn't know anything about it until reading on here. And people seem to justify it with "women want to look after kids". Well, I'm sure most do, but surely they're entitled to the ability to earn a living too! Even if kids are in school, income is often massively impacted. The system definitely needs revamping. I feel for everyone struggling with it on this thread x

It generally IS a woman's problem though as they tend to be main carers of kids.

And as someone said above most women want to keep their kids with them. There is actually nothing stopping a woman walking away, leaving kids behind and not paying cms. They also have that choice

When my child was young and her father fucked off I tried claiming money. He told them he wasn't working (or claiming benefits 🤔)
I sent them a pay slip, the work address and phone number and the photograph they requested.
His boss said he'd never heard of him.
6 months after he died, I received a letter from them asking if I was interested in pursuing him for debt 🙄
(On reading this I have to wonder what BoJos child maintenance bill is 🤷🏻‍♀️ and whether he pays that willingly )
OP it is disgraceful that you are OK to run a house, work AND pick up the nursery bill but your child's father can claim poverty and only afford/be made to pay far far less.
The system is fucked.
I acknowledge both men and women can find themselves in this position, but it is women on the whole who are left holding 'the baby' and struggling financially.

Does that divorce statistic just mean in 62-70% of divorces, women start the divorce process? It doesn't account for the reason for divorce? Because I'd be surprised if 62-70% divorces were happening because of women choosing to walk away from an ok but not perfect marriage.... I can imagine a lot of cases where the man is cheating, financially/emotionally abusive, just plain lazy and not contributing to the marriage, and as a result the woman feels they'd be better off divorced.... so they probably don't have a financial plan for post-divorce, because they are only divorcing due to unacceptable behaviour on behalf of their spouse.

I don't have any stats so might be wrong, but of the handful of divorcees I know personally, all were due to infidelity or shitty behaviour on the male partners side!