We separated and divorced 8 years ago, and have 4 kids (11, 14, 15 and 17). I gave up my career essentially when the kids were young, pragmatic decision at the time. Ex’s career flourished. I bought him out of the family home with significant help from parents because he wanted to force the sale of the house and at the time I was working very few hours and would struggle to rent it but a house big enough for all of the children.
Now that we have a ‘clean break’ financially I keep coming up against problems because of his inflexibility (he was diagnosed with Aspergers a few years ago before the divorce)
We live 5 minutes away from each other, and we have an almost 50:50 split in terms of the children - alternate weekends and I have them Wed, Thurs, Fri - he has Mon, Tues.
The children are entitled to FSM because of my income - I’m in receipt of UC, I do work full-time but it is not a high in one by any stretch, my ex earns about 5 x what I do. The children have various residential trips upcoming which the schools are either fully funding or partially funding because of my status, yet we are asked to pay a contribution (about 25%) to my daughters’ trip and ex wants me to pay half. Now - the children have also been in cubs/scouts etc since we got divorced and ex has refused to pay towards subscriptions, camps etc at all over the 8 years… because he doesn’t ‘agree’ with it. Don’t ask! I don’t think he enjoyed cubs as a child. So, I’m fully finding 3 summer camps this year, he’s refusing to pay anything, yet he wants to split the small proportion of the only trip he’s been asked to pay for and wants to split it equally?
also, once every year I’m asked to attend a residential with my work (I work in a school). Every year for the past four at least I’ve given him approx 7 months’ notice but he still refuses to alter our childcare agreement (I.e swap one weekend for another). In the past I’ve muddled round this with family support (sister has two kids, parents have two kids) but with different schools, buses etc and my parents in reading frailty it’s really difficult to ask them. The easiest thing would be for him to accommodate my request as it would be better for the children, and I’d always be happy to accommodate if he needed to swap a weekend (go to a family wedding, go away with work etc).
Because he always refuses, I can foresee that for the next 7 years until my youngest reaches 18, I will never have an option to go away in any shape or form unless it happens to fit with the schedule which was set in stone when we split up and has been rolling ever since. I’ve asked to change it, even on a trial basis. Even asked to look at the handover times which are rigidly 7pm (even when we were caught on the M5 in traffic on the way back from our holiday). 7 pm didn’t suit when our youngest was three, but he wouldn’t change it. He won’t change anything.
this time last year I tried to get mediation, again using my entitlement to benefits to part-fund… in the event his intransigence caused the mediator to say there was nothing more they could do. Standing up to him leads to going round in circles, but accepting his demands/requirements and never being able to make my own requests is what I have always done because there just is no way forward when he is so rigid and refuses.
The kids accept his ways and say there is ‘no point’ asking him as I know what he’ll say, and if I try to stand up to him they tend to see me as being difficult. It’s my daughters parents evening tonight, and initially she was faced with having to make appointments ‘early’ or ‘late’ and he said he could only make ‘late’ because he is at work. I work close to the school but further from home, so would have to come home and go back again so ‘late’ is less convenient for me… but I do it to fit in because it’s not about me, it’s about my daughter. Then he suddenly realised last week that it is his day off so has now insisted the appointments are re-booked ‘early’ even though I’d made arrangements in the meantime.
I know I’m gabbling on. I just feel so powerless and cannot understand how a man who I divorced 8 years ago can have such a negative impact on my life. People say ‘don’t let him’ but I literally can’t stop him because he just cannot compromise. Cannot and refuses to listen. Thoughts please?