Child maintenance - what do you use this for?

[Justnoisewhitenoise]

Hi mum's,
I hope this isn't an invasive question, but those who receive a reasonable amount of child maintenance from their ex partners, what do you put this towards?

I am going to be in receipt of maintenance by my ex for my daughter and was wondering if it would be reasonable to put towards her nursery fees? I pay for all her clothes, food, toys and general up keep, I pay rent also, I also have childcare costs and my exes maintenance would provide beneficial towards that, I was just wondering if it would be reasonable?

The pittance I get is just put in the general pot of money, so I don't set it aside for a specific reason, it's just part of what I use for bills and expenses.

It's meant to be paying for anything connected to your child so that could be half the cost of renting a larger place to live than you need for just you, some food, half the cost of nursery, half cost of toys etc. In theory it's half the cost of raising their child

nails, facials, shoes..... I wish!

Mine didn't even cover childcare costs so added to my salary and paid for bills, clothes, childcare, food, mortgage, childcare, activities etc etc. Constantly told how lucky I was that I received anything at all...

My ex has just had his mandatory reconsideration rejected! The case has now switched to collect and pay so hopefully to receive some kind of payment towards our daughter from her cretin father. I think I will use it towards nursery costs its certainly not going to cover half but it's something.

Ex puts the money into an account that is kept separate to anything else, I don't even have a card for it so have to transfer it to another account.

It's used for anything extra that DS needs. So this year I've been saving it as DS has just started college and needs loads of textbooks etc and he's hoping to learn to drive in a couple of months. The money never goes on anything other than DS, however I know we're lucky in that we don't rely on that money to feed/house DS. If we did I'd just put it straight into the house pot

Why wouldn't it be reasonable to pay for nursery fees? That's part of the cost of raising your child, paying for childcare so allowing you to work to pay for everything you and she needs.

Even if her father is a high earner and his contribution is large in monetary terms, it is a relatively small amount of his income compared with if you lived together and he paid his full share of rent, bills and childcare.

Most people just put all income into one pot and pay for everything without saying 'this pays for X and that pays for Y'.

When I received maintenance it was just used as income, the same as my wages. It wasn't spent on a specific thing it was just household money.

I wish I was lucky enough to be able to set it aside and use it solely for extras for ds but I'm not.

Mine covers the mortgage and also used to cover the council tax as well before dds turned 18.

i've saved mine up this year and used it to redecorate the kids room, they have both had new beds and furniture for their rooms. It looks really nice (cost a fortune!) and I didn't have to worry about the cost.

Their dad is very lax with maintenance, quits his job to avoid it so I never count his money in my monthly budget- it goes into my savings and if it comes in we use it for treats and bonus things outside of our usual budget hence the bedroom make over! :)

I personally think that if I am paying for everything for my kids and one month I want to use the maintenance for myself then I will. The money I get doesn't reflect in any way how expensive kids are and I cover everything so that they don't miss out on anything.

I can’t even understand your logic of even asking why it wouldn’t be reasonable!