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?

Op I'm a single parent and I get the mental load issue but I think you will be shooting yourself in the foot here.

If he is genuinely paying for half of everything your child needs, every month, then you may end up worse off even if you think you aren't going to be.

Even if you accept that the mental load of filling in school forms is a significant burden, the OP has admitted that she doesn't even do it all. When he gets the letters he does them.

Oh yes, see examples on this thread. Hilarious really.

Are you a single parent that has 50/50 shared care with your ex?

No, it's more like 80/20.

Indeed so even if there is a “mental burden” to filling in the odd school form… you have the lion’s share of it rather than 50/50

Well, sure, but it sounds like the OP still has the lion's share of that kind of stuff even though she has 50/50 physical care of her son.

Not if you read her posts. When he gets the letters, he does them.

I'm irritated by it. The mental load is huge and overwhelming. It's having to project manage your family's whole life 24/7 and having everything from what day they have to wear a spotty outfit to school and take a £1 coin to noticing when their favourite sandwich filling has run out and getting more. It's not just remembering what day they have swimming lessons on, it's finding the right swimming school, getting on the waiting list, buying them a costume and goggles, making sure it's washed and ready to go every week, remembering which towel they don't like because it's too scratchy and giving them a pep talk when they want to give up because it's hard. OP is making it into a joke by pretending that logging into parent pay and then sending a text asking for £15 towards the school trip is the mental load.

The child maintenance service has accepted he needs to pay with equal overnights and it’s being taken from wages, so why would they reverse this decision? And would he be within his rights to go to court?

I'm not convinced by her posts that she does half of this though? And it's not just "the odd form" IME there's quite a lot of admin. But all of this is arbitrary, I did say I don't think all this is worth the OP's time and she'd be shooting herself in the foot potentially.

Agreed.

'For your child'. Sure. 😂😂

If they are separated his finances are absolutely nothing to do with her.

I was just about to say this. There was also comment about ex saying he should get half of that ?

OP, you guys are not entitled to child benefit on that salary, you'd need to pay a child benefit tax charge. If you didn't then you owe money

www.gov.uk/child-benefit-tax-charge

The CMS gets things wrong all the time.

My DH reported a change of income. They somehow got confused and doubled his maintenance payments, leaving us struggling to pay bills.

It took them 4 months to fix it and his ex then only got £50 a month for 6 months whilst he was reimbursed.

He absolutely can contest this, and will win, as they are in breach of their own rules. He probably won't need to go to court.

"Q: What happens if the day-to-day care of a child is equal between a paying parent and a receiving parent?
A: In this situation, the paying parent does not have to pay any child maintenance for that child."

There it is in black and white.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-maintenance-how-a-childs-living-arrangements-can-affect-payments-factsheet/how-your-childs-living-arrangements-affect-child-maintenance

@Glassofeau I get a partial payment, I used to get it completely but then exceeded the threshold.

If there is a large disparity in earnings then CM can still be awarded even in cases of 50/50 shared care.

Exdp and I had this arrangement as he earns over double my earnings and receives a generous annual bonus.

He doesn't pay me the CMS calculation ad that seems ridiculous to me, it reckons i should get £450/month which given he had her 50% of the time seem high. So we privately agreed on £150 plus 50% of all school/hobby costs.

We no longer have 50/50 as since starting high school dd prefers to be in 1 location for school and my work is more flexible, my house is also "hpme" but we have not amended the CM amount as I don't need the extra money but i know if I did he would happily pay it.

You do risk damaging what seems like a good co pretending situation. Legally if CMS says he should pay then he should be paying, morally, well that's more difficult. If you arenliving comfortably without it then I would be cautious to damage the more important side of things.

I’m incredibly surprised that they have done this as it’s directly counter to what their own website says.

id encourage him to challenge this, in court if needed, with a high degree of confidence that it will get corrected and he’ll owe zero