Fucking fuming - child maintenance review

[aremenreallysuchcunts]

Got child maintenance review today. DC dad declared he earned £13,248 last financial year. He claims he works 6 days a week and is always late picking dc up due to work and works every weekend even the Saturdays he has dc. He owes £1254 in arrears via the cms and £2500 from before I applied to the cms (obviously I have written that off) so now I get the princely sum of £29.30 a week but not before cms have taken their 4%.
is this a joke? How do men like this have no shame? I know there is nothing to be done I am just venting. I have never included his money in my budget thank god but that doesn’t mean I don’t need it! I work full time and I work hard but why do men think this is ok? Why do the girlfriends think this is ok? Why do the father’s parents think this is ok? I have 3 boys and no way would I be congratulating them on avoiding maintenance.
Oh, and he’s a plasterer 🤣
Fucking patriarchy.

This whole thread is horrifying.

Makes me think that any woman is safest having kids with a man who's a salaried employee, rather than someone who works for themselves.

When these men are old and ill, and their children don't want to know, the chickens will come home to roost, mark my words.

My eldest dad paid less for her entire childhood than one of her pairs of school shoes, so I understand how shit it is and I can hand on heart say I did my best for her, but life would have been more comfortable for her if he had contributed- and that fact makes him an absolute waste of space, loser .

My STBEH pays quite a large amount of CMS, but I know that ultimately, his mother would take the side of me and the kids. So he has to do the right thing.

Well how many years are single parent families been the norm been gping for a while now and dont notice any roosting happening

What has marriage got to do with it? There are fathers who just go along with what the wife wants with regards to having children with no thought to what that involves married or not

I'm not talking about single-parent families, I'm talking about men who are crap towards their children once they're not with the mum anymore, like not paying child maintenance and leaving the mum to struggle.

when couples get together they are not single parents but they are when they split up, so married or not how much investigation do couples do when they decide to have children before they have them? how sure are women about the way their partner will be as a parent when they are together or seperate

how much care of children promised and financial situation of fathers are the women sure about before they have a child with him, or is it 'stick my head in the sand and think everything is rosy and as long as he brings home enough money so I dont have to work and all is good until it goes wrong'

Do women blindly just have the first and keep on having children then ask questions later?

And then go to have more children with the next man and then complain they have to pay for their previous child and have less money for the new children?

Women keep on complaining how bad men are but can't wait to have as manay children as they can with them

They accuse men of hiding money and playing games to show how little they earn but do they know the full financial situation while they are still together? or is it all ok as long as their lifestyle is funded by it and they dont need to think about it?

These men should be ashamed of themselves.

My children are early 20s now but when I got divorced my ex was expected to pay the grand total of £1 a month as he didn’t declare any income.
Bizarrely, he had managed to buy himself a property for 650k cash and had upgraded it for another few hundred thousand. They investigated but it didn’t come to anything. He now has a property up for sale
for £2 million and spends his time sailing on his boat and never paid more than that pound!!

They should but they're not. They are proud of themselves.

Proud of financially neglecting their children. Proud that their children went without necessities that they could have easily provided. Proud they found a way to put their own wants before their childrens needs. So proud in fact that they brag and crow and share what they did, knowing a hell of a lot of their friends and family will support them.

If they were the sort of "men" to feel ashamed, they wouldn't need to feel shame as they would have paid their dues from day one.

Thats why we need to work to make abdication of fathers responsibilities as socially unacceptable as hitting those children. It needs to be seen for what it is, abuse of children.

Nice bit of victim blaming there.

Here is an idea.....why not pop off and educate yourself on the dynamics and psychology of abusive relationships. Why women dont leave despite it being obvious that she should.

Maybe then you will understand why the victims of these men are not to blame because the chose badly.

Oh and while you are at it, cancel your subscription to the Daily Fail.

I think it would be a vote-winner among women.

But among men? Sad to say, but I think the majority would be inclined to vote against this.

There's still this narrative out there that women are out to rinse men and screw them over financially, and that they get cushy deals from the family/divorce courts.

So many men genuinely believe what their mate Kevin has told them about how they've been so unfairly treated. Men believe it. Even men who aren't actually affected personally and are usually decent in other ways.

The patriarchy is so ingrained in them, any attempt by women to get men to pay their way is viewed as gold-digging and women trying to sponge off men.

The amount of time I've heard men, including those close to me, spout what is clearly absolute rubbish about how poorly a work colleague or acquaintance has been treated. Slagging off the ex for only working part-time and wanting the "big house" - while ignoring the fact that we're rural and there's literally no childcare so the ex is having to do all the school runs around her job while Man does his Big Important Job. And she needs the big house because - shock, horror! - children need bedrooms.

Ugh. I'm honestly so sick of arguing against this in real life, for women I've never even met or know of. I just can tell from the few "facts" that clearly aren't correct, that the bloke is spinning a yarn yet all his fellow men believe that he's hard done-by.

Men would never accept tougher CMS rules if they have a choice.

Lots of really good ideas here. It’s scandalous that so many children are done out of the support they deserve. Reforming this system could be a key measure in addressing child poverty levels.

The current system lacks a sense of how much is needed to raise a child. The heart of the system should be making sure children are adequately provided for; not just a notional (but often unenforced principle) that non resident parents should also be taking responsibility for children.

PPs idea that there should be a guaranteed state payment which becomes a debt for the paying parent if they don’t pay, is a great basis for overhauling the system, protecting children and giving the CMS teeth.

As well as measures for dealing more effectively with self employed fathers hiding income, another thing that needs addressing is the loophole where pension contributions reduce the income that the child maintenance calculation is based on. It‘s so easy to use this cynically to reduce child maintenance and the welfare of children should come before voluntary pension contributions.

I was the second wife.
My husband paid $25USD/mo in child support for his daughter.
I was mortified.
I used to send my sister $100 as often as I could and she’d get a money order or whatever was anonymous and would send it to them and write “for the girls” on it - they had 2 girls.
To her mum’s credit she never asked if it was me, and maybe she never suspected.
I felt better that we were contributing but I know now that it was me contributing.
I looked my former stepdaughter up on social media awhile ago.
She goes by her stepfather’s last name now.
I’m guessing she found out about the $25/mo. Or the fact that her father has time for himself, but never for anybody else.
Kids are not stupid.

I do think we as a society set this dynamic up though.

so many women still take responsibility for the house and kids. It’s always women’s salaries that “don’t cover childcare” and it’s always women that give up work or reduce hours and consequently they are the primary parent while dad works at his big job and can opt out of parenting in favour of being the financial provider.

we see it on here- women divorce then worry about the kids going to dads because he’s never had them on his own before.

dads don’t form the bonds or feel the responsibility towards children, and once they’re divorced and not working for the family they don’t feel financially obligated either.

it’s back to the don’t give up work, keep your pension, and make sure he parents his kids as much as you do. If you work and stop picking up the slack at home to “enable” him to spend all his time at work then he’ll have to find a solution.

dh was the first man in his office to ask for flexible working. It was tough, and he got a lot of “can’t your wife do it” when he had to do the school run. Everyone else had a wife at home so they never even thought about what the kids needed. But when I was on shift he had no choice.

if we set up a dynamic where we stick to gender roles- women do all the parenting and he maybe takes them to football on a weekend, then we can’t be surprised when he doesn’t do much more after a split.

Was he the same when you were with him and you were fine with the tax-avoidance at that point?

Just to add to my previous post above, I have my own story, like many other women here.

16 years ago I was in a new relationship with someone. I knew it wouldn't be long-term, it was just fun as far as I was concerned. He was a few years younger and very immature.

He told me that he'd fathered a child, years before, but he had "never been allowed" to be a father. That the girlfriend had whipped the baby away to some unknown destination while also putting in a CMS claim.

Being the wonderful, upstanding chap that he was, he instantly quit his job and starting working for his dad in his self-employed business, thereby sidestepping any CMS payments. But he assured me that he sent money to a solicitor every month and when the child reaches 16, he will have a whole heap of money waiting for him, and a letter explaining that it wasn't his fault.

It was clearly a load of BS, and I remember thinking at the time that it was hilarious that he'd think I'd believe him.

Not quite so laughable when we had a total contraception fail and I discovered, to my dismay, that I was pregnant. With twins.

I finished the relationship. I dropped his things off and he raped me. And then over the following weeks he went silent - I had previously told him that he needed to decide and tell me if he wanted to be part of their lives. I got a drunk four-word text several weeks after the rape, but that was it.

I decided that I wanted nothing to do with this prince among men. He's never paid a penny, never been in touch, and I've never put in a CMS claim even though, god knows, it would have helped.

However, my twins are now approaching 16 years old so I'm expecting a letter and a wad of cash for them this year, because surely he'd definitely be doing the same for them as his first-born? Right? RIGHT?

It was a deliberate decision not to claim CMS, for multiple reasons. But certainly in part I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of slyly being able to get out of paying for these children as well. Better to stay silent and leave him constantly looking over his shoulder, wondering if one day he'd get a knock on the door. If the CMS system was set up properly, I would have done things differently and not gone through as much financial pain trying to do things solo.

Not saying his attitude to CM is right by the way, he sounds like an absolute areshole, but if he has always had this approach to money/paying what he owes then his behaviour was sadly foreseeable.

Yet women have kids with loosers like this.

Before I got pregnant he never gave any indication that he was anything other than totally straight and honest. He slammed dads who don’t pay or dont see their dc.

I know. It isn’t always that simple and men don’t always show themselves to be useless until they can no longer hide it but I get what you are saying. If only life was that simple to say ‘don't date a loser’ I am trying to make it clear for my dc that they should have standards. I grew up with a dad telling me my standards were too high 🙄 and I should be grateful for a man.

He's earning well below minimum wage then isnt he?
Plasterers today earn at least £300 per day. If he's working 6 days he's earning a minimum of £1800 a week.
He's on a tax dodge and consequently isnt contributing to the upkeep of his kids. Dob him in to HMRC.
He's a liar!

You could sign one of the open petitions on the parliament website about child maintenance or create your own petition as well as emailing your mp

My son has three children with his ex. He earns £70k ish PAYE and payes £280 pw Child maintenance. It's what's due and it's his committment to his children. I think that if a parent is avoiding CMS payments it sould be seen as the same as avoiding tax. And the under declaring of income or sheltering money should be seen as money laundering. This may be seen as harsh and may not be a popular view but it needs fixing and I feel can be one of the route causes of child poverty.

I honestly do not understand how absent parents don’t want to contribute financially for their children and also by their physical presence in their lives

Absolutely not knocking your son but do you realise the cms level is the absolute minimum a father has to pay? Your ds may well contribute in other ways too but it’s a bit like a company paying minimum wage because they are forced to.
Sorry reread your post and you didn’t say your ds has been made to go through the cms but the principle of my post stands