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.

To be fair in my area plasterers are quoting £180-£200 a day but still enough to pay more than £29.30 a week!

Or just to make them pay a statutory amount regardless of income. Up yo them to earn enough to pay it. Whh should the child suffer financial hardship but not the adult who walked out on him.

Yep. I sat at lunch listening to two male colleagues, who I’ve always liked and respected, complaining bitterly about paying CM. It really made me look at them in a different light. One has 3 children under 10. They live with his ex wife who works FT. He sees them 2 weekends a month but usually a lot less because when he travels abroad for work he tries to schedule in client meetings on a Thursday or Friday so he can stay in the city for the weekend and ‘enjoy some down time’. He earns £200k plus bonuses. His wife is a teacher. Yet he begrudges the CM he pays because she kept the house which is apparently deeply unfair.

The other colleague made a point of boasting about how he ignored his ex wife’s messages asking for money to buy their DC shoes.

I don’t know how these men sleep at night.

What's the plan, what do I need to sign?

Another thought - if ex is only earning £13k a year what happens when he reaches retirement? He’s early 50s

I will come back with a plan. Though I am not a good leader so if anyone else wants to take the helm?
in the meantime - emailed MNHQ, Will email MP, will look at any relevant petitions, going to call cms for clarification on what they are actually doing, contact gingerbread and speak to them about these situations and see what can happen there. What else?

Yet men like this manage to find the next woman and goes on to have more children with, if men were meant to pay what they should I presume blended families would lessen so there is that

Having returned to the UK recently I think the acceptability of going under the counter is a large part of why the government is in trouble. Those people saying that HMRC aren’t going to be interested in a plasterer taking his wage cash in hand - you’re right, but if the courts make an example of people from time to time, HMRC should as well. If the OP’s ex is earning far below what a plasterer charges locally it should be a simple thing for HMRC to set up a simple sting, posing as a client and asking him what his day rate is. The work they put into chasing people who are looking for a job or claiming PIP - something like that pales in comparison.

My situation is a little different, but still frustrating..
I got a mesher order instead of CMS as I couldn't have afforded to house the kids when he left.
I worked out when he left that up to the youngest being 18, he should've paid about 85k in CMS with no return on that money..
Instead when the house is sold he gets about 90k back.
Yes ok, my fault for getting a mesher order (trying to not uproot the kids and I really do have my 'village' living here) but how can it be right that in essence, he gets all his 'CMS' back??

Everyone wants to pay cash in hand. Nobody wants their money going to the government. People like to moan that the government don’t repair roads/give more to the nhs or to schools. People are right that big corporations who avoid tax are the ones the government should go after.
People are ok paying paying less with cash in hand because it suits both parties and if big corporations are getting away with it in the millions/billions what is the problem with getting a plasterer on the cheap at the weekend? We all get that point of view don't we? But then how do I afford my dc? Not the father because he is shit, the government ready to reduce my UC as much as they can and all the way I am working an honest job full time, trying to be wholly independent but can’t because the industry I am in pays shit and is being hit by cuts right, left and centre because the local council is bankrupt 🤦🏽‍♀️

If there is a system people will play it. So the taxpayer is supporting OP and her family (not her fault), the ex’s girlfriend and that family. (who knows what that father is contributing).

I had a builder once who was quite open about what he thought of the UK benefits system (was from an EU country). He declared £12k a year and lived with his girlfriend who had a child and lived on benefits. Girlfriend was pregnant and he said he wanted to marry her but then she would lose money as he couldn’t declare that he lived with her. So he wouldn’t be going on the birth certificate. So much of this going on.

My colleague’s husband is a plasterer. They were wanting to buy their first house and she was saying he was declaring all his income for a year for the first time so he could qualify for the mortgage. Income about £500/day (London). She was moaning because the tax etc was leaving them shorter than they were used to!

So OP you can comfort yourself that they can’t build savings or buy a property while they’re living off benefits and cash. Small compensation.

Is it worth someone who is more articulate than me writing a question for the government petition site to get the government to look at opening a debate on this? I am sure between Mumsnet and maybe pregnant and screwed it could get a fair bit of interest?

Something along the lines of asking the government to include assets like shares, cars, property and taxable benefits in the calculation?

This will be incredibly outing if you know my but fuck it.

My son is 17. I’ve had the princely sum of £10/week his entire life. Never questioned if it should be more as didn’t want to rock the boat (read: bait the bear).
When son started 6th form (still in full time education) dad suggested we both give son allowance of £50/m.
A few months later I realised he’d stopped my maintenance to give that to son as his contribution. Son says he doesn’t always give it to him, either.
So technically I’m ~£100 down a month, not £50.

I've not bothered mentioning it because what’s the point. He also owes me £180 for a college trip we split down the middle. Left me on read when I gave a gentle nudge a few weeks ago.

I totally agree! Trouble is that would involve some government department doing more work and they are cutting civil servant jobs! We certainly can’t rely on the CSA. It needs an overhaul, but first a working group of single parents (both Mums and Dads as there are Mums out there who are just as bad) advising government on the issues so they don’t make another shit show of it.

Oh do one. How many stories would you like of women who were married, in decades' long relationships, with men who actively planned children with them, who suggested and participated in IVF and who were decent, involved dads until they weren't? How many versions of "he changed overnight" "he's like a stranger" do you need? Women who were totally blindsided when their exes upped and left, almost always for someone else and who then prioritises that new person and any children that come along, or her ore existing children over his own. They old tropes of "you must have known" and "the signs are always there " is utter bollocks.

What an arsehole!
Have you told your ds the state of play now he is older?
My ds is 11 but we talk about various life situations and I make sure to never mention money or maintenance in front of him but I am wondering if that may change

Mine just didn't bother paying. He kept not paying it and letting the CMS chase him until the point they threatened court action. Then he'd make a couple of token payments. Then he'd stop again and the chasing would start again.

Eventually our children all turned 18 and I was still owed a very large sum in arrears. CMS said they were closing the claim as our children were now adults and it wasn't worth them pursuing it.

It's shocking that men can wait until their children become adults and have the debt written off.

I would love to know the percentage of mums who behave like this compared to dads

Yep, my children get 50p each per day from CMS from their dad. He’s on the lowest amount. I probably won’t even get that soon as one of my daughters has just left education.

Ha! Yep...my ex is over £2000 in debt and 2 liability orders in and currently has to pay £0 is he's clearly getting cash in hand, no one can live on nothing but they refuse to investigate.

On the flip side though my husbands ex is supposed to pay us as we have DSC more...but she's fighting tooth a nail to avoid it, so it's clearly not just men 🤷🏻‍♀️

I have a lot I want to say on this but I am too angry on your behalf to articulate it properly plus I have to get ready for work so will do later.
Genuine question - what other debts are written off as easily as maintenance?

you may be the first woman I have encountered on mumsnet to own her poor choice of partner (due to poor upbringing) @aremenreallysuchcunts. Most just get defensive.
When I speak to a good friend of mine, the signs were there when the first child was expected. But she wasn’t willing to let go of her idea of a happy family so went on to have further kids with the same loser.

Of course CMS can do more. At the end of the day it’s the parents responsibility to provide for the kids. If you were still together then could be get away saying he doesn’t have any money to pay?

Going by MN alone how many posts on here a day are 'I will list 100 red flags but I love him I dont want to lose him' type posts do we need to read for some women to take notice

How many times are women going to sit there and be treated badly with their head in the sand and ignore eveything around them?

I own every choice I made. I make no excuses for my situation. I do try to understand how I got here though to ensure my dc don’t end up like me.

Because women are told from a young age that the goal in life is to get a man. It is ingrained in us. Women are told if they are single they are left on the shelf whereas men are living the dream and so it goes on.