I’ll give some background.
Exh and I broke up 4 years ago. Divorced for 1 year now. Originally he paid £250 a month maintenance. 18 months ago it was time to remortgage so I bought him out of the house. £100k was transferred to him. My solicitor said at the time, that £100k was very generous. But he is living in a small rented flat, and whilst it’s obviously not up to me how he spends the money, I wanted him to be able to buy a reasonable sized property for the benefit of our children who go to stay with him EOW (and a bit more in the holidays).
Anyway a month later he went self employed and stopped paying regular maintenance. I went to the CMS and they said he didn’t have to pay due to the benefits he was receiving. A few months ago they did their annual review and the situation is the same. I asked them to look into the £100k he had - a “variation” of income or something, again, they said due to the type of benefits he’s receiving, and the fact he has the children EOW, he doesn’t need to pay. Full disclosure, I do sometimes get something from him. For example in February this year he sent me £90. I didn’t get anything in March.
The things he says to me (I don’t ask) and his lifestyle suggests he isn’t struggling for cash. Last year he bought a new car and he went away 2-3 times for weekends away (this is what he tells me, I don’t ask). A few weeks ago he sent me a message by accident, clearly meant for someone else as he deleted it shortly after, saying that he’d been commissioned to do an expensive piece of work for a major company. He complains about buying ANYTHING for the children on his time. Last week I gave him a set of swimming things so he can take our dc1 to his swimming lesson on his time and he’s lost the goggles already. He text me moaning about having to buy more.
Several people on here have suggested I report him for benefit fraud. I haven’t because I don’t see how that would help. I wouldn’t get any extra money, I’d probably get even less than I do now. I can afford not to get the maintenance, well I don’t have much of a choice do I, but I’m not living on the breadline. He has the children about 30% of the time, on average across the year.
Last night I asked him to look at the summer holidays and let me know when he would like to look after the children. He works term time only, but I have to book annual leave/holiday clubs. He responded saying he’d look into it but at some point he is going on holiday, to another country, which is one of the ones that the foreign office advises against travelling to.
I’m fucking fuming. I feel like something has snapped in me. How dare he go to another country that’s at risk, when he has young children. How dare he spend hundreds going on holiday to another country when he can’t even provide the bare minimum for his own children. So I am very tempted to report him now, but I’m worried it will come back to bite me.
talk me down please!