What’s the fair way to pay for this?

[huserrr]

Dd is starting at a private school next September. Fees are 30k a year including VAT.

ex pays me 890 in child maintenance (this is the minimum he is obligated to pay). He does often buy extras for DD but she never stays over with him as he is pretty much working all the time.

my career has suffered as a single parent. Ex is on around 100k and I am on 60k. Unlikely I will earn more now as my career has been affected massively by doing everything for dd on my own.

when it comes to paying school fees what’s fair? I suspect ex may suggest we split the fees and he reduces child maintenance as well. I am interested in thoughts before I have the conversation with him. For context he is usually reasonable about things in the end.

It isn't. I know many single parents whose careers have really taken off once they were rid of the dead weight .

I don't need to at all. You're an independent woman of means and significant levels of savings. Why are you so hell bent on remaining more tied to this man than you really need to be?

I'd suggest you split it roughly according to income, so he pays £18-19,000 and you pay £11-12,000. There could be extras to pay, ie uniform, extracurricular, trips, books so these could either be split accordingly to income and you receive less maintenance or you pay for out of maintenance unless it's a major one like a trip abroad.

@SilverChampagne by doing all nursery runs? All pick ups? All collections when unwell? All time off when unwell? All nights awake when not sleeping? Hope that gives an insight. And funnily enough his maintenance wouldn’t cover extra childcare beyond nursery. At one point it didn’t even cover half the fees. Honestly there’s no hope for women with comments like yours is there 🤦🏼‍♀️

You talk about things things being “women’s job” or impact on women in general yet you are actively falling into the trap by treating the man as a cash cow

Exactly.

If you're so stressed about your career (understandable), use your savings for a nanny so you can work and skip the private school.

Sorry, op, but you really need to reflect on your own part in your career stalling, rather than blaming his lack of parenting.

He’d only have been parenting out of office hours regardless of how committed he was.

OP has secret savings which she can use. So isn't concerned about affording her share.

I think he should pay 50/60% of school fees and also maintenance on top.

@40somethingme with receiving the bare minimum maintenance? Come on we can do better than that for a cash cow.

@ohpoowhatnow this was my feeling on it, I’m glad others have suggested it too

@SilverChampagne sure, but that’s not equal is it, either.

Absolutely. She could get a nanny or au pair and prioritise herself career over her child once more.

He doesn't have to give anything other than the minimum maintenance.

If you can't afford to send her on your own income, then I wouldn't send her.

You had a child with a man who doesn't want to step up. Many women are in the same situation.

In a coma but normally make a regular payment for school fees? - that could be argued to be in the donors best interest to make a cash gift within their usual spending pattern

Nothing wrong with working and using childcare.

Nothing wrong with choosing not to.

OP has options here and they're all good options, no need to slag any of them off.

It is really sad that he doesn’t want to see more of his child. But hiding savings to punish him financially is not good.

On affordability, it helps to think of the school fees as ‘net’ and be clear on how much would you need to earn to generate the gross income for £15k/£30k net.

As others have said, extras are really key - some school bus costs are £1k per term. Lunches can be several hundred on top. If he will refuse to give you half on costs then it will get harder.

If you were a couple I'd fully agree. But you're not.

He's being a shit parent to his DD for sure. You're choosing to pick up the slack because you're a dedicated parent. But he owes it to DD, not to his ex or her career.

You need to get out of the couple mindset.

Agreed

You’ve said that you want more though - you want the cms and for him to additionally pay more than half of the school fees .

All of that while hiding your own savings

so no I don’t thing you are doing women anywhere a favour with such an entitled attitude… if anything you’re deepening the usual gender stereotypes -high earner man, poor woman who sacrificed her career / make him pay for it nonsense.

If I was in your situation I would ask if he could pay extra for school fee even if it meant less maintenance.

You’re getting an undeservedly hard time OP. Unfortunately MN often seems to hate

1. private school
2. unmarried mothers
3. inheritances

I’d give up on getting a sensible answer here.

Your DC has two parents with good incomes and savings. The fairest way to split fees is proportionate to your net salaries. Leave child maintenance out of it as this goes towards food, clothing, shoes, the roof over her head, heating etc. extras should also be shared proportionately.

Have you looked at the current fees for higher year groups. They generally go up considerably as they progress to secondary school age. If you don’t see your career progressing will you be able to afford the fees in the future. Also there are lots of other extra costs that go with private schools- more expensive uniform, trips, music lessons etc how will you organise the funding for that?

On take home pay, you would clear 3.8k and he would clear 5.8k. After maintenance this would give you £4.7k and him £4.9k. So your fairly even in terms of disposable income. Given you both want to send DD I would suggest a 50:50 split.

However, given the fees are close to 30% of your JOINT income and fees have been rising substantially year on year, I would caution the decision as it doesn’t seem very affordable.