Maintance payments should be like the USA

[OopsDearyMe]

Why is it that non resident parents are means tested? It drives me crazy. The cost of raising a child should be 50/50 and therefore each parent should be required to provide for 50% of the costs. No matter what. When you are the resident parent you have to beg,borrow or steal to provide for the children and yet if you choose to be a feckless parent and not work you only have to pay a palt amount. No consequences for you mate, its sick!

In the US you get a bill for what your child needs, regardless of what you can or cannot afford, if you don't pay you go to jail.

When will the UK make these feckless, losers pay for the closeness of their pants!!!!!

I'm not sure what the answer is but the system needs a serious shake up.

If I, as an RP refused to feed, clothe and look after my kids, I'd have social services beating my door down. EX on the other hand has no obligation to support his children. OW has now become SAHM to their children while I work my fingers to the bone to support his children.

That's probably the best post so far Lello.

My dear XH has just stopped paying maintenance, 9 days notice he gave me despite him knowing for a good 8-12 weeks that he might be made redundant. No effort made to set any money aside during those 8-12 weeks. This is the second time he's done it - the first time he again gave me no notice at all, he walked out of employment with a perfectly good wage to go self employed with no income (it never got off the ground, what a surprise).

He pays for his third child he had with his new wife, but apparently because his first two children don't live in the same house as him it's out of sight, out of mind, drop those commitments as you feel like it.

Now I happen to know he's carried out some quite expensive home improvements and bought a vehicle just for him to use (just in the summer) in recent months when he knew he might be getting made redundant - as Lello says, if I spent all my money on booze and caviar SS and said oh sorry I can't bring the kids to the meeting point for contact cos I've spent all my money and there's nothing left for petrol, the courts would have me for breakfast! But he can choose not to pay for his first two children as and when it pleases him?

The agencies do have the teeth but they choose not to bite. It's pathetic.

The calculations for the overnights are goofy. My DD was going EOW, she now rarely goes on a weekend yet the difference is literally virtually nothing - I don't get another 20% a month or anything like that - it is almost nothing.

I can't foresee any improvements in the near future tbh.