To think him sending me 1k every month isn’t a solution to making this fair?

[Seeetwap]

Ex is a consultant in the nhs. He earns around 110k. Probably will earn more in future.

He is supposed to send 950 a month based on his salary (thereabouts) but he sends 1,200. He chose a job literally hours away from us after we broke up when dd was 1.

He sees dd once every couple of weeks, sometimes more if he pays for a hotel and stays nearby for some extra days. He’s good with dd when with her but obviously doesn’t do A THING in relation to DD’s care.

I also have a full time job. I work in a competitive industry and I’m struggling so much trying to keep up with everything. I’ve told him that choosing a job so far away and just throwing extra money over isn’t a solution. He point blank refuses to look for another job.

I know I can’t make him do that or make him be in Dd’s life in a fuller way. I also know I can use the money for extra childcare etc. I do know this. But the reality is it doesn’t help much as I’m still doing school runs and bedtimes and taking her to parties etc. The burden of it all on me feels so immense and I often just cry at the end of an evening.

AIBU to feel money doesn’t make up for this in the way he thinks it does? He feels that i ‘get more’ so should shut up and be happy. I am so unhappy and frustrated.

It's different if you are a consultant.

Ask him for more money and pay someone for school runs ect. Maybe get a mother’s help. At least you can make all the decisions ect, some men make separating very difficult, try and find the plus side.

Dont think you are unreasonable, except for it not being as easy for him to change jobs as you might think.

If it’s the same OP who has posted about this many times before, IIRC, his speciality isn’t that common and he had to move in order to become a consultant (can’t remember if it’s for the role or for the training for the role).

Then he should have put his career progression on hold whilst his child was so young.

Presumably, the op has had to factor her child into her career and any possible progression plans.

What a parent shouldn't do, no matter what their job (apart from armed forces I guess where you actually don't get a choice) is swan off to facilitate a job, wherever that may be, leaving your child to the bare minimum contact.

I don’t understand this mindset. Parenting is not only a burden, which is how you are discussing it, as a single parent myself, I feel glad that I do not miss out on all the joy and love that my kids bring into my life. I will have a lifelong bond with them that their father won’t have. Try to see the positives in your situation. I know it’s hard work too but you only have one child and I assume you love her? Get a grip.

Firstly jobs don’t grow on trees, he may have taken the only position available.

secondly even if he was close, you both have careers so you need a proper long term childcare strategy- consider au pairs perhaps, or my friend has a similar situation and has 2 student nurses lodging with her for low rent in return for a bit of childcare and help around the house, they work shifts but they are set ahead so it seems to work out well for all (2 lovely young women, and she insured her car for their use which seems to be the biggest benefit for them as youngsters)

There’s a lot we don’t know. Im guessing being a consultant takes years of training and if you’re offered a post, maybe there’s no real choice in the matter. Maybe the 1200 he sends is precisely contingent on him making that move? Is fortnightly contact ideal? No. But perhaps it’s the best he can do at the present time.

Wow he cares enough to send enough for the child to live and mine get £3.45 a week

Yanbu at all. I agree you should g
use some of the money to give you some kind of respite.

As pp has asked. How about your DD goes to stay with him during holidays etc?

I think the people who are saying he’s a decent dad because he pays money missed the part that says you’re a decent earner yourself and would pay him the same to parent.
A dad only paying money towards bid children’s upkeep without spending a good amount of time with them isn’t a decent dad. Let’s.

They do but they can only go where a job is available- if one is available close to home they may need to move areas.
With the financial situation, one may not come up for many years.
A locum may not be available if there is no money or no real need for an extra consultant.
My friend has been through all this and now one her partner lives 80miles away during the week and comes home at the weekend if not oncall.

I don’t know what would have been the option if he stayed around - go on the dole? Seems ludicrous and a sure fire way to end up deskilled, unemployable in the role you trained years and then possible mental health issues

Was there an option for move with her ex to where he would be?

Make him pay towards a a live in nanny / housekeeper

I don’t know why people are giving you a bad time.

Raising a child alone, with little or no respite, is very difficult. Some single parents have very supportive families, some don’t; some have good incomes, some don’t; some have exes that pay maintenance, some don’t. But we are all in the same boat, drained at some points of the week and wondering at times if it would be nice to be the non-resident parent paying up to 20% of their income, but most times much less than that), so somebody do all the child rearing for us and we could walk into the sunset with plenty of free time for hobbies, to advance our careers and plenty of time to rebuild our life with the only time commitment of dropping by to play with the kids for a few hours once or twice a week… and still be called great parents. Wouldn’t that be great?

it is frustrating OP, but you cannot make a parent have more contact than they want, there is no legal recourse for that. Some will say you are complaining for nothing but you have as much right to complain as anyone else.

My exh earns several times what your DH earns, paid far less than you get and didn’t see his child at all. What helped me was to assume he had died (someway, he did as the caring parent he was when we were married absolutely ceased to exist), so I stoped expecting anything from him and saw maintenance as a small widow pension which was never going to pay the bills but allowed for some nice extras like paying for afterschool activities or taking DS out.

So everytime he didn’t send a birthday card, forgot to send a gift for Christmas or didn’t pick up the phone when his son was in hospital, I just reminded myself that dead people cannot do anything of that and get on with it. Surprisingly, not losing so much energy expecting for him to show and being frustrated about it, made lone parenting much, much easier.

Another thing you need to consider is that that distance may be protecting you and your child from the nasty side of your exh that brought you to divorce.

Best of luck, it is not fair but you will manage, we all do. Eventually you will look back and realise that you and your kid had a great time even if dad was not showing as much as we do

(will send this by DM can in case you have had enough of people complaimig you are greedy)

But be cautious with how you phrase this request (which is a request, not a demand) if he is already paying more than the CSA expected.

There was a case on here recently of someone whose ex was paying more than the CSA minimum and they decided that they wanted more so started getting solicitors involved. If I remember correctly, the ex then dropped the amount that was being paid and one of the teenagers was so disgusted by what they saw as their mum's greed (yes, I know teenagers don't always understand everything) that they moved in with their dad.

And even then at his level he wouldn’t have been as available as OP wanted and she would still be doing the bulk of the childcare and paying even less.

Surgeons aren’t known for having the best work life balance. OP would have known that when she chose to have a child with him.

I'm a consultant doctor. A large number of consultants end up getting jobs in the region where they trained and sometimes it isn't possible to get a job exactly where you want, as consultant posts are very long term (it used to be that people would stay in the one job for life - that's less common now, but still there is far less movement that in other jobs.

When I finished training there were 11 of us in my region that finished at the same time - there were less than half a dozen jobs in the region, so some people needed to move out of region for their consultant jobs.

If you decide to seek a higher maintenance payment through courts, you can get more but bear in mind that within a calendar year of the court order being issued, either of you can go back to the CMS and get maintenance adjusted to the minimum required by CMS maintenance calculator.

You can apply for variations through the CMS but before you do just ensure that they are likely to increase maintenance for more than the little extra he us paying voluntarily.

Well the bar of "what constitutes a good dad" is pretty much subterranean then.

Of course you can feel sad he's not doing more. Sad for your daughter too that she doesn't get more of a relationship with her dad.

But then you need to give your head a nice big wobble and realise how privileged you are compared to people who manage on their own without a big slug of financial help.

You can't change who he is, so you need to change how you respond to the situation. Both in terms of stopping wallowing in how hard you have it and also in terms of making some practical decisions about how to make your life easier. You have plenty of cash so you can presumably afford a babysitter, cleaner, gardener? Can you adjust your hours at work /adjust your expectations on yourself about your career?

Edith Eger's books The Choice and the Gift are brilliant for teaching you how to reframe your thinking when stuck in a tough situation (she was a holocaust survivor)

That can be true for doctors in the early stages of their training, but not for consultants. Consultants apply for jobs that are advertised.

@Seeetwap YABU because no woman should have a child these days unless she's prepared to be a single parent. At least as many relationships break down as stay together which isn't great odds for long term equal parenting. And as long as women have the babies they will continue to be the natural default parent.
Your ex pays more than he has to and does visit so he's not a deadbeat dad.
Pay for help - you can afford to, and it will perhaps help change your mindset.

These situations will never change for so long as society thinks that women should be grateful for any involvement or money at all.

Personally I think that £1200 per month on the low side when his salary is probably around £6,000 after tax. He should be paying you half of the childcare bill plus half of her other expenses because you have to maintain a home, pay for childcare, feed and clothe her plus do all the actual physical care.
The state can't make him spend time with her but it can and should make him properly financially responsible for his full share.

Please ignore all the horrible messages about how you should be grateful for the money. Paying maintenance for a child you helped create is the bare minimum. I’m a single parent of 4, and my ex pays good maintenance but it is no way half the cost of raising the children. I need to take them shoe shopping today and school shoes plus trainers alone for 4 kids will be close to £500! Every penny I have goes on raising, housing, clothing those kids and he pays no extras, birthday parties, activities, pocket money, phones (for the teens) while he has plenty of spare cash. In addition I do every school run, appointment, cook every meal, deal with every emotion, and generally rearrange my life around them while he does nothing, and he lives in the same city. Our son got diagnosed with autism- I sent him the assessment report and he didn’t even reply.

It’s not fair, it’s shit. But I’ve made peace with it by expecting nothing from him except the amount that hits my account every 3 months. Sure, it could be worse- he could not pay anything! But it could also be a whole lot better- he could take an active role in the lives of the children we had together and it’s ok to feel angry about that.

Not about you though is it ? OP didn’t ask for a bitter tirade. She asked a reasonable question and you think a reasonable answer is to tell her she should suck it up and be grateful because there are people worse off than herself ? Her ex has positioned himself so that he has no day to day caring responsibilities and clearly thinks money will make up for that, and the lack of a meaningful relationship with his DD in her formative years. Yes, the money will help, but it doesn’t make it right. And OP doesn’t have to like it.

I’m in a similar situation to you op only I have two and their dad goes away for two months or more at a time then briefly shows up and goes again. I also get identical maintenance. Despite what everyone on here says. It really doesn’t go far. Rent alone is £1700 a month.

Currently it’s the summer holidays, their dad is not around for one single day. I can barely work as I simply do not have the childcare. Holiday clubs of 10-2? How is that actually helpful. By the time I drive I have a three hour window in the middle! I’m stressed out, exhausted, poor, snappy and it’s a lot. I’m basically living in survival mode and it makes me feel sad. I would give anything to have a few hours to just go for a walk by myself or read a book!

if you want to message me feel free. I can absolutely relate.