Law requires an urgent update

[somethingwronghere]

My history b4 I get mugged lol...

Divorced 24 years ago, with 2 young children (7 mths & 2.5 years at the time).
We met when I had my hair cut one lunchtime in the city... she was my barber. Fell in love etc... married within 2 years and had 2 beautiful children. She earn't £13k and I circa £250k.
She left me after 3.5 years of marriage. She walked away at 24 with a 3 bed house and no mortgage, £££ pcm maintenance for her + child maintenance for 16 years. I never missed a weekend with the kids... Ever.

So there... I've set my stall out in terms of the obligations I've met without regret or bitterness.

So picture this, my friend married a woman 14 years his junior. She had £1500 of debt and a £300 car when they met. Had 2 children... fast fwd 9 years and she had him arrested from his own house in the middle of the night for DR. Charges were dropped after 6 months... no evidence. The day after all charges are dropped, he gets served with a NMO. She's still living in the house that took him 30 years of hard work to buy expense free, while he's in rented accommodation. He's a great dad, yet his weekends with the kids get cancelled at short notice for no reason. She's now told the kids the unfounded fictitious story of DR. To a 4 and 7 year old... (and she's a qualified child therapist).

I can tell you now, he has no recourse. No way to stop her traumatising the children with unnecessary (and false) adult only information. He cannot visit his own house to collect the children.

Bear in mind, this is separate to divorce matters. She will walk away with circa £1.3m after 8 years, him with considerably less. He will then need to rebuild relations with his kids after being damaged.

Where's the logic in that?

Listen, I know some men give Dad's a bad name... though there has to be some legal mechanism to keep this behaviour in check right?

I don't know any friends that have a woman as the main/only bread winner (not a dig, just a fact). Now if one of my friends were behaving in that manner, I'd call him out... in the most savage way possible... and possibly de-friend them.

So, to finish... a very weird thing happened after my full and final divorce.

I spent nearly 3 years healing and picking up the pieces, I was still getting up at 5am, spending 12 hours on an investment bank's chaotic trading room and getting home absolutely frazzled.

I noticed her attitude towards me was becoming progressively worse... zero respect. Zero tolerance. All conversations were about her and her needs. Any deviation or challenge, however small, resulted in the call being ended or the front door being slammed shut.

Listen, I'm not a victim and never will be... tho I wasted so so much time trying to figure out her behaviour. It only came to me many years later... it didn't matter that she was financially set for life at 25, or I'd never missed a payment or weekend with the kids in all 16 years... it was resentment, even though she moved on quickly with relationships.
It was resentment that she still relied on me financially every month. On one hand she'd erased me from her life and wanted me gone, while at the same time knowing she couldn't survive without my £3,500pcm... this absolutely drove her nuts... which I inevitably (and unknowingly), took the brunt of for 7-8yrs or so.

I would appreciate any constructive comments or opinions from all the great Mum's out there.

TJS

Struggling to find sympathy tbh

Hahaha love that!
I did seriously laugh out loud 😂

You should have asked how often I saw them.... which was 4 days a week (with 3 nights sleeping over)... which is, hang on... 7 days div by 3.5 is... oh 50% 😂

I knew my post would ruffle a few feathers, tho really wanted some female insight (and male tbh).

FWIW, both kids have lived with me for the last 7-8 years... not bad for weekend Dad eh 😉

So what's yr story? Your response was pretty direct and prickly, I take it your ex didn't honour his obligations as I did? Whatever you've been thru isn't a reason to make incorrect presumptions about me

Well no wonder she resents you, if the children have been living with you for the last 7-8 years.

Did it make you feel good shagging a teen when you were almost a 30yr old man? Predator.

How does the law need changing?

Turns out you can...

Tho it would have been a touch more premeditated than ordering a take-away 😂

You're welcome 😉

Yeah, it would be good to have a law allowing prosecution of sleazy controlling older men predating on teenage girls.

.

Strange, my mum lives in a different country to me, and I'm sat up in my bed of the house I own outright. We don't have a basement.

I can see why your ex wife wants nothing to do with you, you're a nasty man.

You genuinely have no idea how you come off, do you? Just from reading your posts I would bet my house that your ex-wife would have a VERY different story to tell. But it's clear nothing could convince you that you are anything but a shining example of manhood, taken advantage of by your big bad evil ex and a legal system that protects women at all costs 🙄. Virtually ALL of the responses have been similar and yet your response is to just lash out at anyone who calls you on your shit. Very telling.

Hmm, in my experience most men that are in the position of earning well understand that if they choose to marry a teenage hairdresser making £13k that things are likely to end disastrously. Or a much-younger woman that is in debt, for that matter. They look for partners that are more similar to themselves and who have values that align.

The few that look for disadvantaged women who come from worse circumstances either have hero complexes or simply enjoy the power imbalance. Both of those will cause a marriage to fail.

I hear what you’re saying and think you’re getting an unnecessarily hard time. I don’t understand the anger towards you, you sound perfectly reasonable, fair and child focused.

You were only late 20’s when you met and fell in love. Not much older than my son, hardly a worldly wise man taking advantage. My big worry is always that he’ll have children with a woman who can’t be fair or nice to him if it goes wrong. He’s a good guy.

You’ve been a reliable and committed dad and I don’t know why your ex became like she did and didn’t foster a friendly co parenting relationship with you. Sad all round. Some people are like that, I don’t think there’s much that could be put in place to stop it.

Not sure what DR is that your friend is accused of? Did you mean DV as in domestic violence?

In your case, if you split 24 years ago, presumably you are not still paying child support and if the kids have been living with you for 8 years, you should have gone back to the courts then to get a reduction / end to it.
For such a short relationship I have no idea why your ex got a freehold house unless you had lots of them or unless you had a crap lawyer.

Did you know what the law was before you got married? Did your friend?
Why do you think that you're different enough to be above that?

The law doesn't need changing, if you were against the thought of possibly giving your earnings to a partner for the next 18 years, you could have said i don't believe in marriage, thanks. Or found a partner of an equal age/ wealth status so you were both financially supporting each other. Why didn't you?

you seem like a self-important arsehole, your ex wife probably hates your guts for grooming her as a teen and resents that her life is now intertwined with such a self- important arsehole.

In your first post you talk about never missing a weekend with them and later you get cross that someone didn’t ask how often you saw them and it turns out it was half the week.
Should we assume from that, that you did miss some of the midweek time?
Or that you are changing your story?
Also why if you had 50% custody why were you paying so much in maintenance?

You divorced 24 years ago and your children have lived with you for 7-8 years so since they were 16 and 18. Maybe their mum wanted them to be independent adults and you wanted to control them.

True story, bro

This. Since your point seems to be about resentment, how would you change the law to deal with this? Is it only women's resentment that should be made illegal, or is it yours too? Because there's a lot of resentment towards women generally in your post.

If any of this is real:
She was 24 after 3.5 years of marriage, so 20 when they married. It's a reasonable guess that she was under 20 when they met.

If you spent 12th on the floor, coming home frazzled, then she spent that time with your dc and was frazzled and lonely.

Your posts sound as though you think getting her pregnant and paying the bills was your part of the relationship.
I imagine she wanted a partner, a friend, a companion to help her raise your children and she was sad and hurt that she didn’t get that.

The justice system isn't set up to protect women, it's set up to protect lower earners. I'm one of those breadwinning unicorn women you talked about in your first post and guess what I got when I divorced? Nothing! And my husband didnt even do the birthing, child rearing and housework, he was just a cocklodger!

As for hatred, my ex could buy me as many houses, cars, diamonds etc as he wants and its never going to make up for the hurt, how he treated me and his daughter, or make me like him one little iota. Marriage isnt ALL about money (although i do encourage thorough financial planning).

Oh the poor woman. Your snarky replies are very revealing.

Honestly the system isn't perfect but I think either side can play it and it's designed to protect low earners which tends to be women who have children.

Studies have shown for a long time women (now they actually have access to education!) out perform men academically.
that didn't translate into the workplace salaries until recently. Now its shows women in their 20s are out earning their male counterparts

If you search threads on here (and you should) it's littered with threads by women who have husbands who are either generationally wealth, self employed or own their own companies who go to great lengths to avoid paying basic cms.

I am the high earner in my marriage by a considerable way. I was geniunely very shocked at how much having the audacity to have children has impacted my career (naively I thought I'd "out played the system"... but no...) so I do actually think it is right in instances women who birth your mutual children receive proportionally more assets in divorce.

I think in marriages of under a decade with no children everyone should walk away with their own assets unless there is some exceptional circs.
I'd personally be totally fucked over 700k worse off if my dh and divorced today and went 50 / 50. 2 kids and a 5byr marriage and he'd be walking out as a very successful trader with a x15 in 5yrs on "initial investment" I'd love to see a stock or fund delivering the same... nvdia

As a separate but related topic family court is a traversty and the perfect tool for abusive and controlling men to continue exerting control it also forces children to have contact with the person terrorising or abusing him while theater watches on and isnpukished by the courts if she doesnt facilitie it

So you’re in your 50s now. Me too. I have heard my share of break up stories over the years and lived though some of my friends and family’s divorces and my own.
Your two examples are still just anecdotes. Two high earning men with two lower earning younger wives who did well financially out of the break up. That is not typical.

In the UK I think 40% of partnerships have a higher earning woman. Quite remarkable when women still carry the motherload.

Yes it’s disgusting to claim DV to win in a break up. It happened to a male friend of mine and I believe him. That’s my only example though compared to the dozens of stories of women who have split from lazy, cheating and abusive partners and are broke with their finances ruined by their relationship.

What laws need to change? Excepting false claims of DV, men can bid for custody and have the same chance of success as women.

In your example if you did 50% of care in the UK now you wouldn’t be paying what you paid your ex wife a few decades ago (in the US?). In your own example if the marriage had ended what did you expect her to do for housing?

No law changes needed but maybe some societal changes. Don’t get married to a teenager during the lust phase of a relationship. Don’t marry someone if there is a massive difference in background and finances. Don’t have a baby with anyone when you’re very young and they’re older and earn all the money. Not in the West. The woman is likely to become unhappy and they have rights and it will end badly.