Ex continues to make claims through CMS

[Skeptadad]

My ex and I have 50/50 shared care and she attends pre-school 5 days a week. School holidays are split. My ex keeps informing CMS that she is the primary carer. I have told ex that I will pay a contribution for our daughter to ensure she has a nice time with her mum - I am a high earner but I am not paying more than that.

I feel I have a moral responsibility to pay to ensure our daughter has a reasonable level of living with ex and of course want to make sure ex can keep our daughter warm and have treats/holidays.

I have told ex that I am feeling harassed by CMS as they can't do anything as she is saying she is a primary carer even though we both care for our daughter in our time with her.

It's the last hold my ex has over me so I really want to rid myself of her chains and get on with my life.

Any idea how I can get my ex to do one? I suspect this is going to end up at tribunal which is a shame as we keep ending up in court. The way she keeps messing with my life is counterproductive as it makes me feel like I won't give her anything if she keeps being a pain in the bum!

A cms claim should be simple. It’s a benign equation that is supposed to remove all the emotion and acrimony. If you truly owe your ex nothing, then is responding to the claim really that onerous?

I am curious, are you paying for half of preschool?

I do find this very curious. Where I live, the calculations aren’t based just on parenting time, they are based on income. The formula also includes all child care, medical, and school related expenses as specific line items on top of day to day expenses because those can be so large.

And that is unforgivable behavior on the part of your ex. I understand how you feel, and the contempt you have for her - I have been there myself & felt the same having been on the receiving end of similarly heinous false allegations made by my ex-husband which all but destroyed my soul at the time & changed my life forever. As if those horrific 2 years of fighting these lies weren't enough, I've been investigated more times than I care to say over these last 10 years courtesy of unrelenting fiction on his part. You call it trauma, and you're right - it is. Nothing compares. These are not easy things to work through, and it's tempting to 'indulge' those negative feelings but they eat away at you. It's hard for anyone to understand, unless they've experienced it.

Her actions don't have to define you, nor does the past. Be the Dad your daughter needs, doing the right thing for her even when you have every reason not to.

If your Ex did the things you say then that’s awful.
But it shouldn’t affect the amount of financial support you give your child.
Perhaps you would get more support on here if you didn’t use phrases such as she “wouldn’t behave”. A lot of men would prefer it if the women around them “behaved” (ie did as they were told)

Your ex "wouldn't behave"? What do you mean by that?

Look given the latest post about your ex accusing you of paedophilia and domestic abuse it's really clear she's one of the bad ones.

She's obviously a terrible person to do all the above.

We both make our own life choices. but these are not totally free and equal between the sexes.

Women earn less than men, whether they are innthe same type of job or whether they are in stereotyped jobs that are valued differently, regardless of whether they have children.

When a couple decides to have children, for the vast majority, they do not get to choose who bears the burden of pregnancy or infant care.

Thereafter, women bear an unequal share of domestic tasks, mental burden, societal blame for behaviour as well as responsibility for health, education and social activites.

50/50 time does not make it 'equal'.

It's impossible for us to give an objective view when we only have your side of the story and that is full of red flags that we recognise from previous situations we have encountered.

But I would be interested to know - is the reason why you are a high earner now possibly only the case because you weren't doing 50:50 care when the DC was tiny, or were you able to focus on your career then? Doing 50:50 care is a lot easier once the kids are old enough to be in school and with wraparound care. I wonder if your ex had to sabotage her previously good earning potential in order to give you that freedom back when you were together, in which case yes you do owe her financial support now. Or maybe you are one of those men who deliberately choose a nate with significantly lower earning potential than themselves in order to not feel their ego threatened, in which case yes you owe it to your daughter who you brought into this situation to ensure that there isn't a great disparity between standards of living in the two households. Has your ex had the freedom from rhe demands of parenthood sufficient to gain qualifications and put in the hours to get a higher earning potential?

Childcare is about a lot more than where the child physically is. Is there genuine 50:50 care when it comes to arranging drs appointments, vaccinations, dentist, haircuts, new shoes and clothes, making cupcakes fir the preschool fayre, sorting out playdates etc? Is it 50:50 when deciding who has to drop plans at no notice if DD has a tummybug and can't go to preschool? If there's any disparity there then that parent is still the primary carer even if the child is asleep in bed in each house for 7 out of 14 nights every fortnight.

By the way. You don't need mumsnet to delete your account. You do it yourself in the mymsnet bit of the settings

I find it sickening when either party keeps coming back for money even though one is earning more and there is 50/50 care.
You might be in a better financial position to buy your daughter more clothes and shoes, pay for school trips or whatever than your ex is but at the end of the day she needs to get out there and forge a career for herself.
What she is doing is basically begging - she is not a helpless little female.
My exH keeps trying to get our consent order (no kids with him thank God) overturned and failing so he can get more money to pay off his incessant debt.
He treats me like a bank and I have no respect for him as a man whatsoever.

Leaving aside her behaviour, to me it really depends what you earn. If you’re on £45k or £450k as a ‘high earner’ makes a difference. On £45k what you’re doing is fine, but if you have sky high unlimited funding then it’s churlish not to do more.

That's not his problem. If the Ex couldn't afford it then she shouldn't have gotten pregnant.

It's not new that only the female carries the offspring.

OP I would go to court and get a written CAO once you obtain that and submit it to CMS they will go by what is written and not her word.

You're letting your opinion of your ex cloud your judgment of what is best for your daughter. It isn't good parenting for her to see a marked split in the standard of living between one home and the other. It will affect her life in the times she is with her mother, and don't think that she will grow up wanting to spend more time with you because you have more money- More likely she will sympathise with her mother, and wonder why you didn't share your wealth in order to ensure both her homes are equal.
Of course, you can continue as you are, but is that really what you think is best for your child? She deserves every privilege you can afford her on all her days, not just when she's with you.

If what you say about her mother is true, then the responsibility is on you to teach her compassion and grace. Model kindness, always, even when (maybe especially when) that is difficult to do.

Interesting to hear 50/50 in other countries doesn't equate to no financial responsibilities outside of the personal 50 % time. It's abused so often in the U.K. as a way to not pay out any money to the lower earner mother.
As a parent you don't have to see your ex but you should be doing everything you can to support anyone who looks after your dc in bringing the dc standards of living up instead of having a skewed weird situation of lower standards of living one half the week better standard of living the other half.
I personally would happily take care of my children and give money over at my expense if it meant my dc had a better life. The dc ideally should not see one nasty tight parent and one struggling parent and this is the best way to avoid that.

I am sure you realise that it requires 2 people to make a baby

Yes, and he is doing 50% of the parenting and financing that

So she is required to deal with the rest.

Wanted to belatedly step on to this thread.

The law is clear - maintenance is completely unrelated to the needs of the child. That is why at times some parents pay less than is needed, and some pay more.

It is entirely related to the means of the payer - which, let's face it, is how most of us operate in normal life (for normal I mean beyond the lives lived by some people on mumsnet). If we're poor, our kids don't get nice things. If we're rich our kids might get lots of nice things (but not necessarily).

There used to be (and still are - I see them every month) non-resident parents who complain that the resident parent isn't putting all the CMS maintenance towards the child. Often they are justified in their complaint, but always I have to tell them there is nothing they can do about it. So yes, child mainteance can be used by a resident parent as a personal windfall (eg one recent one had lots of holidays without the child).

A few years ago the law was changed so that where the parents share care equally, it is not possible to say that one is the parent with care and the other not, and so no maintance is paid via CMS.

CMS seem not to want to listen to those who have a shared care arrangement, so the Child Support Appeal Tribunal is busy having to deal with these cases instead. The end result is almost always inevitable - that there is shared care and the parent who was receiving maintenance has to pay it all back.

OP I would go to court and get a written CAO once you obtain that and submit it to CMS they will go by what is written and not her word.

I have taken cases to the tribunal where the CMS refuse to accept a court order as sufficient evidence.

Yes but why would you when you can get those support human things to do it for you...

Especially when they're predominantly female @ChateauMargaux

It's really simple, you open up the CMS calculator, answer the questions honestly and it spits out a number, you pay that amount and get on with your life.

The back story isn't relevant.

Not all Mum's are great OP as you know. Continue being the better person. Your daughter will respect you for it when she is older. My DD's have very little to do with their Dad which is partly due to how unfair he's been financially towards us. Paying the money is getting rid of her. Going to tribunal is not as the fight then drags on.

Go to court and get a court order setting out the times you have your children. Then send that to CMS. Problem solved.

@Skeptadad

’both parents are responsible for the care of their child/ren. We both make our own life choices’.

One of your life choices was to have a child with a (presumably) low earner. Therefore if you want your child to have a good standard of living (which you should do considering your income) then it’s only fair to contribute financially to that regardless of 50/50 custody.

This is all good in theory, but we don’t know her circumstances. How easy would it be for her to match your income? How long will it take her to get somewhere in life? What held her back that didn’t hold you back? In the meantime, the child still exists. And as I said, it was your choice to have a child with a low earner, so what did you previously expect for the child if you were to split?

That’s now how it works though. NRP has to pay what they need to pay for the child. They do not have to them top up the RP to ensure they have the same salary - this is moving into spousal maintenance territory, and his has (quite rightly) pretty much been scrapped. Assets are split in favour of anyone who has given up work to assist the other if they are married. If you aren’t, you’re on your own. But in neither case does the NRP have to ensure the overall income matches in both homes