AIBU or my ex? Child maintenance

[MoneyWoe]

Me and my ex share our child equally, half the time each. He pays for some things, like our child’s weekly swimming sessions, I pay for others, like dinner money. So this part is equal but I would say I do most of the organising for things. Example, I will organise our child’s school trips like filling in the forms and he will give me half the money. This has worked but recently I have got fed up of having to message him asking for half of the money for things all the time, so I put in an application for child maintenance. I didn’t realise this at the time but he is on a very large salary and the money it says he owes is hundreds a month, way more than when he was just paying half of things. He is saying he is going to argue this with them as we share our child equally, and according to him, in these sorts of equal cases he doesn’t need to pay any maintenance. He said he will take it to court if he has to. He’s also said I might have to pay any money back if the child maintenance service agrees with him.

AIBU to expect him to pay the maintenance and is he correct in that he won’t need to pay any maintenance in our situation?

CMS get it wrong a crazy amount of the time, he’d be well within his rights and if he can demonstrate 50/50 care AND the fact he already pays 50/50 for all the other bits, which he easily can because it’s the truth, he’ll be successful in court.

You might say that but I would not accuse the op of lying.

Op do you also accept that if he filled out the calculation and went to the cms they would award him 280 per month, which they would then enforce and take out of your wages…

@MoneyWoe care is all the things like doctors, dentist. Hospital appointments etc. Who is primary point of contact for school if there was illness or an accident? Who does all of that stuff for your child?

For us, all of that is done by me. Exdp works in a building that has no mobile signal and he cannot easily be contacted so I am primary point of contact.

Therefore we are classed as having 50/50 overnights but not care.

Some of these replies actually have me open mouthed. Her lifestyle post split is not his responsibility! If she wanted the £180k a year lifestyle they should've stayed together. Absolute madness

I find this thread hard to understand. If a man doesn’t want to pay maintenance, he gets excoriated on MN, and fair enough.

But a woman puts in a CMS claim to get the appropriate payment due her child, giving truthful information, and she’s “ruining a good coparenting relationship?”

Why isn’t the man “ruining the coparenting relationship” because he’s refusing to pay the correct amount?

Because we are all baffled as to how any CMS payments can be the correct amount, given they have 50/50 overnights. He also seems to be paying his fair share of clubs and other expenses.

Yes he would be within his rights, because as most people on this thread have said, CMS seem to be operating counter to the top line on their calculator which is to say 50/50 care arrangements do not typically get CM in either direction.

The man was paying 50% and had the child 50% of the time. This is a rare example of a genuine 50% spilt of overnights and care, where the woman decided she would get greedy. She is about to end up with nothing. CMS made a mistake based on false evidence (see all of OP’s posts). She will be rinsed in return and now faces a horrible co-parenting relationship.

It's about the child's lifestyle.

I also object when married couples split costs equally and one parent constantly feels poor while the other is fine.

While I'm here I am disgusted when husbands object to things the children need and women give up on talking about it and end up spending a lot more of their personal funds because those things still need to be bought. People are weird about money.

To be clear, mum's level of comfort is her responsibility but the child should have consistency, they shouldn't miss out on opportunities or live less comfortably because they are at mum's house

I don't think she will get rinsed, though she may need to pay back any CM that she wasn't really due. But he may now get more sniffy about their relationship - hopefully he won't as payments for clubs etc benefit the child.

Rinsed was probably the wrong word but she will likely face an uphill battle financially. Any good will has likely gone and she’ll be in a rose position. Greediness always ruins everything.

Maybe because if the man also put in a child maintenance application based on the CMS calculator, the OP would need to pay him £60-odd a week. But she's steadfastly ignored that point for some reason.

He may well do this and then not pay anything additional for clubs etc.

Maybe because if the man also put in a child maintenance application based on the CMS calculator, the OP would need to pay him £60-odd a week. But she's steadfastly ignored that point for some reason.

Yes in which case the difference is £200-ish - the amount he contributes already.

OP there's definitely no point in pursuing this

She earns £65k a year. He earns £110k a year.

Her ex is contributing equally to all clubs, activities and school trips. He's not missing out on any opportunities.

He is hardly sleeping on a mattress of straw and eating only porridge at his Mum's and then heading off to his Dad's to be taken to school by private jet.

It's ridiculous to expect the circumstances of his Mum and Dad to be entirely equal. My SD's Mum takes her to Disneyland every year, we can't afford that, does that mean she should pay us to take her to Disneyland?

You* think there’s a “lot” for one child at primary?*

Organising swimming lessons
Organising extra curriculars
Organising and hosting play dates, birthday parties and responding to birthday party invites
Taking child to all of the above
Sorting clothing and school uniform, including locating lost PE kits and replacing items at short notice
Organising doctors, dentist, optician, hospital etc appointments and taking child to these
Booking parents evening appointments
Booking school dinners and making packed lunches
Organising various outfits for things like world book day and supplying cakes for cake sales
Ensuring homework, spellings and reading gets done
Arranging wraparound and holiday childcare
Responding to school emails and filling in forms
Leaving work early to pick up poorly child

School emails/forms is just one thing on the list.

Now it might be that if overnights are 50/50 then both parents do an equal share. If one parent does substantially more than the other then there's an argument for maintenance.

@cadburyegg since they are week and week about, homework etc is likely to be equally shared, and op has said that her ex deals with letters when he gets them.

It probably isn’t 50/50 mental load but isn’t 90/10 either.

But the only thing CMS looks at is overnights, so none of the above should have made them take action,

OP didn't mention any of that. She says she sometimes fills out the online forms for school trips.

Quite. Op and her ex do alternate weeks. If dad wasn’t doing all the day to day stuff on his week and op was having too do it, she would undoubtedly have stated this. A lot of the comments here are assuming that dad doesn’t step up. Which is not what the op has actually said.

Or. Athens he could have made it easier for the OP so age wasn't chasing him for money. There's an idea. If they were 50:50 he should have been sharing the mental load too which clearly he wasn't