What is child maintenance for

[Farfromthemaddingcrow]

I’ve been divorced about 15 months. DC is 6, lives with me and EOW with his dad. He is a very high earner. Pays the amount the child maintenance calculator tells him to but not a penny more.

DC would like to go horse riding and the local stables offer a 6 week course on a Saturday afternoon.

I messaged DC dad to ask if he would take him and pay for the days when it’s his weekend with him. I thought it was a reasonable request but got a long diatribe back by email saying how unfair I’m being and how I should pay for activities from child maintenance even when DC is with his dad.

i Am questioning myself now, should child maintenance cover all activities a child does including the ones when he’s not with me? (In which case why has DCs dad never billed me for taking him for days out or meals etc on his weekends?) it doesn’t make sense to me but he has form for emotionally abusive coercive behaviour.

I pay for everything when I have DC, school trips, clubs etc just not the stuff when he’s with his Dad.

thanks In advance

I agree with this. Ask the stables and see if your child can do the 6 week block over 12 weeks and just explain he’s with his dad alternate weekends. Then you can just take him and pay for it.

Also, it may be he has plans with his son during his weekend. He doesn’t see him often so might not want to book out an hour or so every other weekend for an activity and would rather spend the time with his son instead.

If I was your DH I’d be irritated at having someone else arranging what I did in my free time with my child. I’d have made the discussion about that rather than the cost. It’s normal to cover costs when your DC are with you as you acknowledge your DH usually does. Any regular commitment that spans across both households needs to be mutually agreed though not dictated.

If the child desperately wanted to do the activity it would be a rubbish NRP who could afford it and facilitate it not to let the child do the activity unless said activity took up the whole weekend

If I was your DH I’d be irritated at having someone else arranging what I did in my free time with my child.

She didn't arrange anything. She asked.

I have a similar issue, I pay for all extra curricular stuff regardless of who’s weekend it fall on.

I pay for all clothes, shoes etc. I pack a bag Friday and get a bag back of dirty laundry on Monday.

When it’s his Friday night I have the kids until 8ish, I feed them etc.

If I ask for any help towards these things I get a long line of abuse so I don’t bother - it’s for the kids at the end of the day but it is annoying.

I didn't think that's accurate. She is asking is if reasonable to expect him to pay for it if he chooses to take the child. It's different.

If he doesn't want to pay for it, he has the option to not take the child. He should not consider it an option to take the child, and then expect the other parent to pay.

It does depend on how much maintenance somebody is grtting. I read on here once that somebody was getting £4k a month maintenance and also benefits. Because makntenance isn't means tested for benefits. If somebody gets a substantial amount then they shouldn't expect extras.,

I think you are being slightly unreasonable though I get how annoying it is. He pays maintenance so technically doesn’t need to pay for anything else if he doesn’t want to. My ex doesn’t pay for any extras other than food when he has dd, he might pay for an activity occasionally but only if it’s something her arranged himself. I don’t ask him for anything anymore as the answers is usually ‘no, I already pay maintenance and can’t afford any more’.

That's pretty much how it works, yes. If the DC have a shit dad who doesn't care about their hobbies, CBA to take them to/wait around at the activities or doesn't want/can't afford to pay for them, then the DC miss out. Or their DM ends up paying for things the DC doesn't attend half the time because the other parent won't take them.

If so surprising that all the current husbands of women that post here are examples of good parents and all exes are evil.

Gosh all these shitty replies.

OP you asked your ex a perfectly reasonable question. You were fine with the answer being No. You haven't done anything wrong. You didn't deserve the shitty response you got from him or the emotional blackmail.

You're also not unreasonable for asking if child maintenance is supposed to pay for absolutely everything, which he's trying to gaslight you into believing. A decent dad would care about his child's wants and needs. It's a 6wk block, so 3 of his weekends. He can afford the cost and DC wants to do it. He's a bastard IMO if he doesn't take to/pay for DC to do the activity. But you can't make him, it's his decision. So many men are possessive, seeing others as accessories to their own life. So instead of centering his DC in all this he's centering himself. Probably views contact time as "his", not as DC opportunity to have a relationship with him.

Since so many men only seem to want contact time either to piss off the DC mother or as a way of reducing child maintenance payments, it's hardly surprising that for so many dads the contact time is spent with DC on a screen of some sort for entertainment and with the dad's new partner/mother doing the looking after of DC, while dad spends his weekend however he wants to.

You are a misandrist. All your statements are full of horrible generalisations.

Those saying get the stable to split the sessions, that's not going to work. OP's DC would be at a disadvantage. It's a course, the clients will be making steady progress as the sessions go on. OP's DC will miss vital information in those missed sessions and won't be able to keep up in the sessions he does attend. OP's only realistic option is to pay for individual lessons, at whatever frequency she can afford, where her DC will progress at their own rate. This will be much more expensive.

The child needs to learn to get the separate agreement of both parents.

It's shit but unless you have parents who have the same mindset on things like sports and other activities that's what you learn as a child of separated parents.

I was one myself and had parents who tended to agree with one another, and I have SC whose parents have different mindsets. So while we take SC to certain activities their other parent decides not to as they can't be bothered.

At one of these activities they are used to children turning up every other week until they are 12/13 and can take themselves.

ODFOD. Lots of men are exactly like this. It's not misandry to speak the truth. If you're a man who isn't like this then my comments don't apply to you, obviously. If you're someone who's hobby is "being offended" then crack on. I won't be engaging with you further

I could say many women are exactly like you but I will not.

I wouldn't pay much attention to that poster tbh. We see them.

OP it's one seriously shit parent who wouldn't help a child of theirs do a hobby if they could. It doesn't matter how much is paid put, it's just point scoring. CM is to ensure a decent standard of living. It shouldn't be brought up at all when it comes to this stuff. It's shit that a bairn can't do a weekend activity because they're in-between houses EOW.

The only thing you can do maybe is do it during the week if possible. Kids remember this stuff as they get older. Parents rarely escape judgment from their bairns.

Maintenance is actually to contribute towards the costs of keeping the child fed, clothed, warm, and a roof over it's head. You have every right to ask what you did, children costs masses! He's paying the absolute bare minimum abd probably only because thats what hes been told he needs to pay. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't get that. He sounds like an absolute shitbag of a parent.

The riding lessons should come out of child maintenance because it's something that you'd like for ds. If he wanted ds to do a different hobby on his days then he'd pay.
Your ex is responsible for paying CM and 100% of the costs during his time with the kids which is why he couldn't bill you if he went out to a restaurant with them.

@PeekAtYou it’s not something tie OP ‘would
like’ her DC to do, it’s something he has asked to do, and half the lessons fall on exH’s weekends. She is just passing the message on from her child that he wants to do something in his contact weekend, and asking him to support that.

He's paying the absolute bare minimum abd probably only because thats what hes been told he needs to pay
So say he pays £1000 a month maintenance and OP gets £1000 in maintenance and say £500 working, and the child all monthly costs with OP comes to £800, does it really making him a crap father for saying that maintenance should pay for activities. Or should mum use the extra for nice new clothes?

It seems obvious to me that whatever he pays makes a big difference.

What a horrible post.

OP what you have asked is very fair and he sounds awful- he’s clearly paying the absolutely minimum and we all know the CM calculator doesn’t actually cover the cost of raising a child.
Your DC had asked to do something and you have asked dad if he will pay when DC is there. Absolutely fine. He can clearly afford it and if he gave a shit about his kid he would agree or at least say no sorry I’d rather not take him or pay on my Saturdays as I’d rather do another activity with him .
Suggesting you are trying to scam him is being done to unsettle you and make you feel bad.
Don’t doubt yourself, you sound entirely fair and reasonable and he sounds like an Arsehole.

Agreed with above poster

Cms doesn't cover everything!! My ex is happy to pay for other activities and takes my child too! It's mot unheard of to be a good dad.

@Tumbleweeder I disagree that @mrsm43s post is horrible.

Then again I was a child of separated parents and am a step-mother, and know plenty of others in either and both camps.

Separated parents who parallel parent - and that is loads of them particularly for the first 5 years or so of separation- don't know if a request to do something comes from the child if the other parent tells them that their child wants to do an activity or wants something. The child needs to feel and actually be empowered to say what they want directly to both parents from as young as possible.

There have been family court cases where one parent tries to impose what they decide their child wants on the child's other parent. Mothers tend to impose activities while fathers tend to impose day-to-day living stuff like diet.