Husband thinks I owe him money for maternity leave?

[LemonadeShadeParade]

I am so confused! So pleased advice me!

I took 10 months mat leave, and my work did not provide any enhanced mat pay because I had been there less than two years. So I've been living off SMP only which isn't very much! My husband and I discussed this would be the case before getting pregnant and agreed we could manage as we both had allocated baby savings and my husband has a fairly decent salary (though I am the higher earner of the two of us).

I tried my best to contribute but as the months went on and I ran out of savings I had to contribute less and less. Again, this was all discussed before we got pregnant.

I'm about to return to work.

My husband has now sprung on me, that he's been calculating how much I've been short every month, adding it all up and now thinks I owe him the total 🫤

E.g. (not the real numbers) If I usually paid him £800 a month towards bills etc and in March actually paid him £300, he put down that I owe him £500 for the month of March. If I paid him £600 in April, he thinks I owe him £200 for April. Etc. and he's totalled it all up for 10 months and said that's what I owe him for being on mat leave.

AIBU to be a bit ??? by this? Firstly it's not what we agreed but more importantly we're a married couple and this is OUR baby not MY baby. AIBU to think his role here was to support his family whereas mine was to keep the baby alive? I was too shell shocked to say anything before we were interrupted and didn't finish the conversation.

I'm so confused, am I wrong? I mean if he suddenly lost his job or got sick, I would support our family, is that not how families work? Doesn't the working parent support the other parent who's off work looking after the baby? I thought that's how this works?! ☹️

My uni BF ranted about the fact that his lazy mother hadn't worked and his dad had taken all the strain.

His parents were lovely. His dad had worked as a GP and then as a doctor at a well-known chemical firm. His mother had been a SAHM who had also worked part-time as a dog groomer.

I recall that the weekend that I was invited to stay over at theirs, the expression on his mother's face was delight and relief that her son had finally got a girlfriend.

I realised that I had a problem when I liked his parents more than I liked him.

This is so unreasonable - from him! I’m really angry on your behalf.

1. you are married, your finances should be shared 50/50.
2. you took a massive financial and physical hit to have a baby. Taking nearly a year out of work has a big impact on your career. He was being paid for his work and you did yours unpaid.
3. your child is as much his as it is yours.

The worst thing about this thread is that I suspect it might actually be real.... I don't smell a chatbot or a journalist and yet I find it insane that somebody would hear something like this come out of the father of their child's mouth and not laugh in their face.

Surrogates in the USA get around $100,000. That's getting on for £80k.

He really needs to fuck off. Married couples should be 1 team. He thinks you're on opposing teams.

Also, you know how you say his family are all weird? He is weird too.

Buy him some Xmas chocolate coins and say that's the money I owe you...

Assumed you were joking!

Far too cheap!!!
That's nursery, should be top rate nanny figures at least 121 care.

Op bill him for your lost earnings too. Hope your claiming Child Benefit even if it means he needs to pay it.

@LemonadeShadeParade so if you decide not to ltb then you will be rearranging the financial contributions to the joint account at 50/50 I presume!!! honestly cannot believe this! you will contribute exactly the same as him! god help him if he ever loses his job! or you for that matter!!!

He is being ridiculous.

Check out the price of a full time Nanny and tell him that he owes you 50% of that for taking full time care of your joint child for all those months.

I don't get this attitude at all. DH gave up an executive position to go PT in basically a support function when we had kids, earning 10% of what he did before. We don't have a joint account but I transfer several thousand a month to him (the mortgage and bills come out of his bank account, I pay the school fees) and he has an AMEX to do whatever shopping is needed that I clear every month. I don't even look at what is being spent, as I know he only spends what he needs to. We're a family. The accounts might be separate but in spirit we share everything.

Do you:

Own a home together??

Has he been paying into his pension the entire time you've been in mat leave?? I imagine so. So that's another financial bonus above you.

He's accrued another year of experience at work.

You need to go back to work asap. He has shown you how he treats you when you're vulnerable, so take the power back.

Last thing:

How will you pay for nursery?

Tell him he is an asshole and refuse to pay him back. What a loser.

“surrogates typically receive £12,000 to £35,000 as expenses”

So bill him at that kind of level for producing his child…

why do seemingly so many of the mums of mumsnet, marry or/and breed with these utter cockwombles. You know there are decent men/partners out there, ones who respect and support their families. Where they recognise that a family is a unit, one may earn more and one less, one may work outside the home and one within, but regardless the family is a unit, and all income is shared with open transparent access by both adults?

I agree but a lot of this behaviour comes out after the baby is born because men don’t like being relegated to a lower priority.

What imyournewdress said

He'd actually be at a deficit

What the bobbins????? 😮😮😮
Have you billed him for any domestic chores yet, and don't forget to work out your hourly rate as a Nanny?
Nothing like a bit of team work eh?
OP, this is so bloody horrible!
I can only assume your DH is really, really, really dense at best...

The worst thing about this thread is that @LemonadeShadeParade has had a child with a man of this kind of moral character.

What sort of childhood and male role modeling is this poor child going to have with a father who has this sort of attitude?

There is so much wrong with this attitude that I could write pages and pages on it but the obvious ones are

• a TOTAL lack of team/ we are a family/ mentality. This is very very serious because life is long and complex and no one should be building a family with a person who is not of the mindset 'we are a team and in it together.'
• treating his wife and mother of his child with a total lack of respect
• an appalling attitude to money and property of 'what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours'.
• going back on something that was previously agreed.
• poor moral character.

It's shitty and actually even if you hit the roof/tell him what you think/'nip it in the bud' as others have said, you remain married and forever linked by your child to a man with these fundamental character flaws that will not change.

Tell him the payments should have been proportional to income while you were on mat leave and he owes you money particularly if you had to use all your savings and he was paying his share out of income.

Good luck with the conversation with him. Please check back if it doesn’t go so well and you need any further suggestions.

Hoping very much that it was just a badly judged joke.

Tell him you will work it off over time. at Mates Rates: £25 a quickie and £200 for all night. 😏

What a horrible financially abusive man (or a very bad joker!).

tell him that when I was on mat leave my dh paid for everything and topped up my pension and isa savings to match exactly what he was saving so I didn’t miss out. I just really can’t believe what you’ve posted - I’ve never heard of anyone’s husband being so nasty!

Yes definitely going to be rethinking how we split paying for things in future!! But I kind of want him to dig that hole himself with his own idiot logic.

Honestly I'm so embarrassed by it all. I think if I told my parents they would be half way here fully intending to give him an earful themselves. My family are not at all rich but very good at managing money so I think they'd be absolutely revolted by the suggestion

Ok - @LemonadeShadeParade - I've already posted that I think you should counter invoice him for a whole heap of stuff but seeing your update where you wrote this:
"I am giving him some leeway because of his upbringing - I can't express how shit his family are. There have been a few times (not as significant as this ever before though) where he's not really understood normal family dynamics, and it has just been a case of he doesn't know any better rather than he's a genuine prick. It's a bit sad but also, he should know better."

I'm just wondering if someone in his family has had a moment to drop some poison in his ear - suggesting that he has spent money on you and the kid that should be repaid some how. It might make more sense if he had visited them recently and they would make these suggestions to him. He might think they make sense and repeat them back to you - completely logical and without realising that he's being a complete and utter ass about the situation.

When my DW fell pregnant she wasn't too well and was advised to go off sick pending mat leave (miscarriage risk). But we'd already planned for SAMH. She made a clean break and resigned. Avoided the stress of managing it, but left her no income. I paid for everything. Left wallet and cards out so she didn't need to ask. I still feel she was the one who contributed the most. And so does she. We are financially chaotic, and don't keep tally (though live well within our means). OP, the value of some things is beyond price. I hope this perspective might help alongside your discussion based on costs - your contribution is greater than any money he put in.

I’d leave him, and I don’t think it would be OTT if you did. My ex was bad for money but if he had ever said I owed him for the time I spent off unpaid caring for our child i’d have walked on there and then. Absolutely disgusting.

I love your last post... I am late to the party but I see you have had great support on here.. at least you now know that you should never go part time, give up work for a short time, do more than 50% of drop offs and pick ups.. because you will not be respected for this.

The feminist in my head says:

I am so glad you brought this up.. I have also been keeping a spreadsheet - let's put them together and you can work out a repayment plan..

Uterus rental: £100K
Childbirth services including assessment of long term impact on my body: £100k
24/7 infant nursing services, less 25% reduction for the time you were present: £150K

Assessment on impact on my career of being female: £250K - I agree to waive that in return for a commitment to 50% share of all domestic, child rearing and family tasks from here on in.
Assessment of the impact on my career of choosing to have a child: £250K

Obviously, these costs are shared so only 50% of these is our from you.
£300K.

I accept that these are lifetime impacts so assuming you have 25 years of work ahead of you and it would not make sense to continue this into retirement - I have calculated this as £1,000 per month. We can agree to offset the amounts I owe you, immediately so you can deal starting this for a few months. Let me know when you have set up the direct debit.

I love this equal partnership that we have - I am so glad we are showing our child that women are of equal value to men and that pregnancy, childbirth and childcare are truly worth valuing.