My divorce was finalised towards the end of last year, after separation for about seven years. We’ve always had a basically ok post break up relationship, I thought. I have our daughter for 5 nights a week and he has her for 2. We agreed child maintenance based on the government calculator (or at least he made the calculations and I trusted him). I pay for the activities she does on the nights she’s at my house and he does the same. He pays for her phone.
Because of this, I didn’t think we needed any orders or legal agreements when the divorce was finalised. I live with a new partner and he has a girlfriend who he doesn’t live with. I don’t know what he earns but I would guess it’s double, if not three times, what I do. He has a senior role in a high profile organisation which means long hours. I arrange my work to be around when our daughter is around, and do longer days on the days she’s with him.
Our daughter is nearly 13 now and of course it’s not all being plain sailing. In year six she was struggling with mental health and went to therapy for about six months, which he paid for. And guess what - she’s nearly a teenager and sometimes she kicks off a bit - though she’s been brilliant since Christmas and is getting to know things like hormone cycles. Our relationship isn’t perfect of course but we talk a lot and try and work our way through things.
Literally the month after our divorce he emailed me to say that he was no longer going to give me any money. He blames me for being the cause of any bad behaviour and keeps making unfounded accusations about my parenting. These ‘concerns’ don’t stop him asking me to help him out when he has work or wants a weekend away or whatever.
I organised a meeting to try and work through whatever was going on. We were able to sort out some smaller stuff but he point blank refused on the maintenance. I had to get up and leave when he told me I should get a better job.
It also turned out he had all these grudges from when we had first split up about money. Basically it seems like he thinks he ‘overpaid’ in the initial years of our separation (though did he want me and her to be homeless since I couldn’t pay the mortgage on my own?) and that he’s trying to settle it up now.
I then tried to arrange mediation. At first he refused to go unless I also went to family therapy. But I don’t see therapy as a place to agree finances. Nor do I want to sit in a room with him while he tells me what a bad parent I am.
Then after we’d both done all the paperwork he decided he wouldn’t go to this mediator as it wasn’t child inclusive and he would find an alternative. Again, I don’t see why our daughter would need to be involved in a conversation about finances. (He told her we were going to mediation and she asked me why we were doing that now. Did he want me to tell her that it was because he’d stopped paying?)
He’s proposed to take over the cost of her activities instead of giving me maintenance but I don’t want that (she doesn’t eat activities….) He’s also talked about having a 4/3 split or even 50/50. I’ve made it clear I’m open to discussing alternatives. In practice I don’t really see how he’d be able to make 50/50 work with his job.
So it’s now been four months since he gave me any money and every day I worry and worry about being able to afford things. I have been burning through savings in order to cover the shortfall. I have not wanted to go to the child maintenance service because it seemed aggressive and I thought then he would really start pushing 50/50 and I wouldn’t get any money anyway. But I don’t see what alternative I have.
Is there any?