Hi guys,
Guy here, but I often come to this forum to look things up as people seem to keep a level head and discuss things without the 'woe is me' attitude over on DadInfo. Hoping for some clarity from anyone who has had experience in this area.
Short version:
My ex has given birth to our daugher. She hasn't let me see her due to lockdown (Child was born April 10th). She also named the child and announced it on Instagram without consulting me at all. Refusess to put me on the birth certificiate and is an anti-vaxxer.
I have proposed FBA but she is refusing as she doesn't want to sign anything. She initially threatened me with CMS but has now taken the stance of: pay or don't pay, I don't care, despite my insistance that I am happy to go through either CMS or FBA.
I have started reading about the Schedule 1 Act and I am concerned.
I currently don't own any property and have a Taxable income of £40Kpa plus £10K in debts (waiting for hospitals to open so I can work and clear this) and a £750 pm car lease. With my career trajectory and all the other projects I have in the pipeline, in the next 5 years I can see me income improving to between £100-£200K pa. Now I know this seems like a very first world problem, but hear me out.
I am seeing a lot of cases where men are forced to not only pay CMS, but also sell their home, in order to buy mothers a house and a car and give the mother periodical payments on top of this.
I don't care about the money, but I do care about the peace of mind. I want to just reach an arrangement and be done with it, but it seems that with Schedule 1, she can just keep coming after me.
I have a very bleak outlook at my life now, as I imagine, no matter what levels of success I reach, financially I will never escape from this woman's reach as she will constantly be dragging me to court and taking everything I have. My reasoning for this is the number of cases I've read about online where men have been forced to hand over 80% of the net worth to the mother as it apparently benefits the child.
If I can afford it, I honestly don't mind housing my daughter, I have already promised the mother that I will pay for her and her step-sister to go to whatever school she chooses and university. She already has a car, but if she needs a safer one, again, if I can afford it than I will happily buy it. But I see some cases take the mickey where mothers are awarded £80K Cars, £1M houses, £50K in annual decorating fees and then an annual Periodical Payment of £60K just for the pleasure of being a mother! No offence, but as a man brought up solely by his single mother, I know for a fact that this is excessive.
Am I to be a slave to this person for the rest of my young years?
Here is the full story for those who are interested:
I'm an Oral Surgeon (in training). I moved to the South of England from 2018-2019 for a locum year to save some money for some projects I'm working on.
I met a woman on Tinder. I was 27 at the time and she (said) she was 31 and had a 3 year old daughter. Long story short, we started going out and were together for 9 months. At month 7 I found out she was actually 36 but I let it go as I'd fallen for her. I then found out she had a 19 year old, again I let it go.
She was always very irritable about using condoms as she insisted she was on the pill. Stupid me gave in to the pressure and we started doing things without condom protection, but allegedly while she was using the pill. There was an understanding that neither of us wanted a baby and that if a pregnancy occurred it would be aborted.
As fate would have it, Month 9 of the relationship she calls me to tell me she's pregnant. I would say I remained reasonable but stood by my initial stance of an abortion. She didn't take kindly to this (understandably) and wanted to keep the baby. We stopped talking for 2 months.
My morality on the subject is basically, if the pregnancy reaches month 8 then it truly is a viable baby and I wouldn't want her to have an abortion past that stage. I got back in touch with her, and she'd kept the baby. I then made it clear I wanted to be involved and amicable with her. She was fine with this as long as I was financially supportive. This came in the form of covering her other daughter's Xmas presents as her ex didn't help her out with that, and buying a few baby things here and there to get ready for the birth.
We had several arguments about vaccinations etc. In the build up to the birth I felt it best that we cool off communications. On the day of the birth she called me wanting to talk money. I offered FBA or CMS. She initially threatened with CMS, but when I responded positively she cooled off that. She then suddenly adopted a stance of 'only pay if you want to but I'm not signing an FBA and I won't come after you with CMS'.
She then decided to name the baby without my knowledge and post it on Instagram so that I could find out along with the rest of the world. When I pulled her up on this she blocked me. We haven't spoken since. My only window into this baby's life is the mother's public instagram account where she seems to be dressing the baby up in designer things in an attempt to become some kind of pseudo-influencer.