Iwishihaddonethingsdifferently ·
07/09/2025 16:14
NC for this.
I can’t change the past, so please don’t waste time berating me about it- I’ve done all that already.
My daughter is 15. I left her dad when she was 2 because he was emotionally abusive and I also believe he was having an affair with someone else; at the very least they were emotionally involved.
Because he was controlling and abusive, I was frightened to upset him; it took a lot of strength and courage to tell him that I was going to apply to get the child benefit and that rather than have her 3 nights over every weekend, when she started school I needed to see her for either EOW or one night every weekend, otherwise I would only see her during the working week. Before then, he’d had her Thursday to Sunday so that I could work a bit. He was very cross (“so I’m losing money and seeing her less?”) but I managed to grey rock and I told him while we were both at my parents’ house so I was safe and he couldn’t express himself as he might have done.
He’d never wanted to be the main default parent and he never has, so since she was about 4 he has had her 2 nights a week and we split the holidays on an ad hoc but roughly equal basis.
At primary school he paid for some childcare and a few bits and pieces here and there like shoes, or would go halves. He used to take us both out for coffee or occasionally meals. That felt ok and our daughter enjoyed it.
Since secondary school he has paid for less- just her bus- but I have bought her school shoes and most of her lunches and the bigger part of her trips.
I haven’t earned much in the last few years because I have been starting a business. I have been part time since my daughter was born and my pension is going to be almost non existent. My OH pays the bulk of our living expenses at the moment.
Her dad is employed full time in the public sector and has been since we split up, so is on a reasonable salary and has a good pension scheme.
He got married last year and since then our contact has dropped off a cliff, he doesn’t want to talk to me and he goes through our daughter about arrangements. Even at parents evening he wouldn’t look at me or have a proper conversation. I think his new wife (who is his AP from all those years ago) has said he’s not to. He has also told our daughter that he can’t do things or give things to her without also treating his step children exactly the same. Their father is a high earner and their mother also works full time (and certainly isn’t funding anything for my daughter).
Our daughter is bright and a university candidate. She would be the first on his side to go to uni. I have asked him to contribute into a joint savings account for us to share the cost and start saving now for those years, and he has refused saying he can’t afford it. She has had a number of opportunities through school which he has not put his hand in his pocket for at all and which I have paid for through an inheritance. Now she has another opportunity and he is saying it’s too much and he can’t afford to even contribute. This is a great chance to learn to drive, so when she is 17 we would save money on lessons for her, and she will be a safer driver. The annual cost is in the low hundreds, plus the fuel use on the practice days. I think it’s worth it.
My question is WIBU to at this stage go to the CMA so that I can save up for her university education or young adulthood? I didn’t before because I felt it would destroy our reasonable coparenting relationship, and also I am proud that I have done all this by myself; but nowadays with his withdrawal from that relationship, I don’t see it as such a big potential loss and the negatives for my daughter seem to be more around missing out on opportunities than her father not cooperating in order to punish me. I’d arrange a conversation with him first and say what I am thinking.
Advice on how to navigate this would be welcome.