What do your maintenance payments cover?

[Nothavingfunrightnow]

STBXH and I are average earners. Both on more or less the same salary and he has agreed to pay me £300 a month which I think is fair.

However, I have asked him to contribute half to larger purchases like school shoes and DS's residential trip which is over £300 this year.

AIBU to ask him this? He says that maintenance should cover everything. I am not being greedy but by the same token, I reckon half for unusual expenses would be fair. (I bought Clarks school shoes so not THAT expensive but they are certainly more than DS's normal shoes!)

Hi. My exh and I went online and used the govt page to help decide how much he should give me which is based on his wage, how many nights he has them a week and a couple of other things I think.

We do then share the cost of big things like you said. We are splitting cost of elsdest's residential this year. He pays half for brownie or guide trips too. Re school last year I got the shoes and he got uniform. This year we have swapped it and he got shoes and pe trainers and I'm getting clothes. We find it works well.
The money he gives me I use for the activities they do like dancing and swimming lessons etc, normal clothes and shoes, towards has electric etc.
until this year we shared Xmas gifts and big birthday presents.
My exh is good with all this. But sometimes has needed a reality check about how much things cost and how far the money goes. I did break it all down for him once just so he could see how little it covered whilst still being reasonable. And we earn the same wage roughly.

Nothing. Indeed our court order says I must pay 5 sets of school fees/university costs and when we needed full time childcare I had to pay £30k a year for that. Every family differs and much depends on the income of each of you. (I am the higher earner)

We used the CSA calculator to figure out how much maintenance he should pay me. We have approx 50/50 shared care so we split school trips and uniform costs. If I was receiving maintenance without a reduction for shared care, I would expect to pay for these things myself.

The maintenance I receive is to cover everything. I wouldn't expect anything extra for school uniform etc although I would love help paying for that I know the maintenance is to cover any costs for the children.

I had to go through the CSA to get my ex to pay anything at all - he is self employed and the money I get doesn't even cover the cost of what the kids eat in a week :(

Thank you, everyone, for your replies. Chloecoconut, that's fucking terrible. Sorry to hear that.

STBXH has been very reasonable - I realise that I am fortunate in that respect. He has offered to go halves in the bigger expenses like specs and the residential trip and then all the other usual stuff is to come out of the maintenance payments.