Shared care and finances

[HoundOfTheBasketballs]

Just posted to see if anyone else is in the same situation or if anyone can suggest a way forward.

DS is with me 4/7 and with his dad the other three. His dad and I both work full time. His dad gives me nothing in contribution toward DS costs. As an example DS has school dinners. His dad hasn't given me any money towards them in over a year. I paid for all his school uniform, shoes and extra curricular activities. I buy 90% of his clothes.
Every time I ask him for money he feeds me a sob story about how he's on the bones of his arse and can't afford to give me any money right now. Then I find out he's been away for the weekend or has got a new phone or something.
I'm not on the poverty line by any means, but I'm struggling to pay for everything with no help. He seems to think that by having him for half the week absolves him of any requirement to contribute financially.
Does anyone have any ideas of how to wring some cash out of him?

OP, do you send your DC to your ex with clothes etc for the days that they are with him?
Do you pay for clubs etc for your DC on the days that your ex has them?
How do you pay for school lunches? Can you move to packed lunches?

Even those it's nearly 50/50 you're still the resident parent so can you go through the CMS? The online calculator is quite straight forward.

Doesn't sound like it's fair as it is currently and he should be buying 50% of the clothes and paying for the school dinners etc on his days.

Anon In answer to your questions, yes I do send him to his dads with clothes I have bought him. Sometimes they get sent back sometimes they don't. At the start of the school year I sent him there with enough school uniform to be worn on the days he's with his dad. Yes, I also pay for DS activities on the days he's with his dad. And I pay for school lunches weekly online. I worry if I stopped and started hoping his dad would send him with a packed lunch would mean he went hungry. There have been a couple of times I've tried not paying. The school give him a dinner anyway as his dad doesn't send him with a packed lunch and then the school invoice me for the unpaid lunches.

I really only want to use the CMS as a last resort. My relationship with my ex is precarious enough as it is. I think he'd probably take it very badly if they contacted him. And he is self-employed so he probably wouldn't declare his earnings accurately anyway. I really am at my wits end with this though.

you don't need to go through CMS but you do need to try to come to an arrangement with him to share the costs as your child is with you for for more nights and also at the momen despite having shared care you seem to be paying for more than half the costs.

do you know roughly how much he earns?
does the 4/3 pattern continue throughout the school holidays?

when you didn't pay for the lunch did you tell your ex that you had done this and that he would need to send packed lunch or pay for the dinner that day?

who claims the child benefit?

keep in mind that given he had your son 3 nights a week this would drastically reduce the amount of maintenance he would pay you (which works if he is bearing the full costs when child is with him but he isn't)

Rather than going straight to CMS I think you need to sit down together and try to come up with a private agreement - if it's not giving you money each month then he needs to be paying for half school uniform, clubs on days he has son and same with school dinners. that's how shared care is supposed to work.

here's a useful link on private arrangements

www.cmoptions.org/en/family/