Partner still paying mortgage and child maintenance which is stopping us from buying

[Mammacool84]

Hey there,

hoping I can get some advice or guidance- my partner and I have been together over 4 years we now have a beautiful 3 month old and we are in a rented house. My partner owns a house from a previous relationship where he has two lovely children and pays child maintenance. Thing is I want my little boy to have his own room and a house that is ours but all my partners money is tired up in the house he owns with his ex and he says he can’t sell until his two kids are 18!! But this is stopping us from getting a property which I think is so unfair - I don’t get child maintenance etc why should his ex have maintenance and a massive house???!!! I feel like I am paying for his exs lifestyle and kids - why can’t they downsize so his ex can get a solo mortgage? Any suggestions? Thank you in advance

@PassTheSnacks that is advice he should have had years ago before the third child was even conceived. Now that advice doesn't help anyone as it doesn't help or solve the present existing problem. Telling this man 'you should have considered this before you had your third child' is not going to solve the situation is it.

It's like if you slip on some spilt milk, break your ankle and go to A&E, to be told by the doctor 'you should have cleaned up that milk before you slipped' rather than you know, treating the resulting problem. Telling someone what they should / should not have done is just condemnation and helps no one after the fact.

So we just accept shitty consequences for children from irresponsible adult behaviour, nobody should comment on anybody else's behaviour because "oh well, it's done now, no point discussing it"? Sounds like a charter for people to do whatever they like regardless of the consequences.

The fact that it was the OP and her partner's responsibility to think about whether they could afford a new baby is pertinent to what should happen and who should take responsibility for the consequences of the decisions that have been made.

Hence the correct answer being: "we, as adults, created this situation and it's our job to fix it without reneging on existing financial commitments. We will work to increase our earnings through promotion or a second job if we need more money, given we deliberately created this situation."

Rather than: "we can do exactly what we like yet again and tough shit if it disrupts the children's lives and they are forced to leave their home on top of already having had to deal with parental separation, a new step parent and new sibling in quick succession. I'm sure that won't do any damage to them or their relationship with their father or sibling or their parents' co-parenting relationship. They will just have to live with the negative consequences of our deliberate choices".

@PassTheSnacks if you apply this logic to a 'together family': Mum and Dad have three children, they can't afford a fourth, but an accidental pregnancy occurs and child 4 arrives. But because the economic situation of the first 3 children has to be preserved, child 4 has to live on bread and water?

Irrespective of the rights wrongs of the OP and her partner, a 'new' child now exists and has same rights to be supported as the first two.

What a false equivalence. That situation is entirely different because:

a) the pregnancy was accidental. The OP's was not.

b) the older children in that situation wouldn't have been through the trauma of parental separation already and have had to adjust to a new step parent and the idea of a half sibling who sees their dad every day when they do not.

c) in your scenario the parents of all of the children would be making decisions in their best interests in the circumstances, presumably, rather than a step parent pressuring for some children to lose their home so that one child can have a nicer one.

d) the situation wouldn't have the potential to make the children feel that they were being treated differently and therefore cause problems in their relationship with their father and their new sibling and the relationship between their parents.

If people will choose to create these complex family setups with half siblings etc and children who will be feeling destabilised and different to others already, then extra care needs to be taken about such matters so that it is clear to the children that their parents' actions demonstrate that they love them equally and have considered their needs as paramount.

If adults deliberately create a situation like this when there are children to consider who have already had a great deal of change to cope with in their very short lives, then any decent person would be ensuring that they did as much as possible to make those children feel secure and loved. Turfing them out of their house so you can buy a better one for your new family doesn't really fulfil that.

The adults need to take responsibility for the situation they've created and instead of pushing the consequences of it yet again onto the older children, they should sort it out themselves to ensure the children's lives are not further disrupted. It's astonishing, quite frankly, that this needs explaining.

And nobody is saying the OP's child "should live on bread and water." She says that - while sticking to her husband's financial commitments to his older children - they still have enough money to buy a nice home for them and their new baby.

She is cross that it won't be a large 5 bedroom house. And wants us to believe that the reason she wants a 5 bedroom house is for the benefit of her step children, so that they can have their own bedrooms when they visit their father. Hmmmm...

Perhaps ask the older kids if they'd rather lose their current home and potentially have to move away from friends etc so that they can have their own rooms when they visit their Dad, or whether they are ok to share during visits so they can stay in their home, which sounds like the one bit of stability that they've had through this shit show?

Absolutely. Financial commitments to support your existing children should be non-negotiable.

Yes with the maintenance he already pays.

Paying your ex girlfriend's mortgage so she can live rent free for 15yrs isn't. She's an adult who needs to pay her own housing contribution.

Perhaps I missed it but I didn't get the impression he was paying the whole mortgage? Just a contribution to it. As he should. Both parents should be paying 50% of the cost of housing, feeding, clothing and otherwise raising their children, whether they live with them or not.

OP should be pleased that her husband is behaving in a responsible manner and paying his share of the cost of raising his older children, as this means he is far more likely to do the same for hers if their relationship also disintegrates and he leaves her with very small child(ren) to care for.

@PassTheSnacks so based on you ‘first wife’ (I assume) logic

Oh FFS.

Can people really not understand that the priority in these decisions should be the welfare of the children.

This situation has no bearing on my life whatsoever. I am a lone parent and my children will never have step parents or half siblings. So you "assume" wrong.

It's just that some of us actually think children's needs should come above adults' preferences.

Can people really not understand that the priority in these decisions should be the welfare of the children?

But which children? All the children, or just those that came first?!?

That's what maintenance is for. Ex partners are not entitled to child maintenance AND housing paid for.

All of them. Hence making sensible choices about whether to create them, or not. Not turfing children who've already been through trauma and won't get to live in a nuclear family out of their home, which will likely damage their relationship with their new half-sibling, their father, and their parents' ability to co-parent amicably. Particularly when you are - as the OP has stated - in a position to purchase a secure and big enough home for them and the new baby without doing this and disrupting the lives of the children who have been through trauma already. Why would anybody do that when it's not necessary at all and they can provide a nice house comfortably big enough for the new family unit without going back on the financial commitments to the older children and making them lose their home and stability?

If the OP and her husband were unable to afford to house themselves and their child comfortably then the balance of what was appropriate to do would be different (although it would still be shitty of them to create that situation on purpose without having thought through finances in advance and again the first solutions to explore shohld be increasing their income to sort out the financial problem that they have created). But that isn't the case: they have no need whatsoever to do this to the older children, except that the OP wants to have a larger house than they can afford with lots of spare bedrooms, even if this means the older kids being disrupted and forced to move out of their home.

Not very nice, is it?

That's what maintenance is for. Ex partners are not entitled to child maintenance AND housing paid for.

Maintenance should cover 50% of the cost of raising a child, including housing them. A decent parent who no longer lives with their children ensures that the maintenance they pay is sufficient to meet their 50% of the costs. The OP should be pleased if she has married somebody who does so, and would have been insane to have a child with someone who didn't.

And again, before anybody decides to insinuate that I am part of some "first wives club" as was stated earlier in the thread, this is not the case.

I am a lone parent and always will be. I support my DCs myself. They will never have steo families/ half siblings etc so my comments are not motivated by any personal experience or self-interest, rather frustration with selfish adults who fuck up children's lives and seem incapable of putting the needs of children first yet are quite happy to continue procreating in multiple relationships with no regard for the impact on their children and with people who have so little care for their existing children that they'd happily needlessly disrupt or impoverish their lives to fulfil their own selfish wants, when they are perfectly capable already of meeting their own needs without doing so. Adults who won't own the consequences of their decisions and want to push the impacts of those decisions onto kids who had no say in the matter. Shameful, really.

@PassTheSnacks genuinely curious - do you really think that if a couple split, the father should continue to pay the mortgage on the house his ex lives in until his youngest is 18? Even if that means he can not buy another property?

Everyone I know in this situation has sold the house and split the proceeds. Yes there will then be maintenance paid of course.

I imagine in the OP's partner's situation, it probably benefitted him to continue to pay the mortgage and still own the house for a time. He probably couldn't afford to get a new mortgage alone, and leaving it as it is probably let it grow in value, and maybe there were fixed mortgage implications too. But if he wants to sell and buy another property, why should he be stopped from accessing his money (currently tied up with his ex) until the youngest is 18? That is unreasonable and it would never be stopped by the courts. That only happens in very extreme scenarios.

You clearly haven't read what I've written.

No: and, from what OP has said, that isn't what is happening her anyway. Happy for her to correct if I'm wrong but it sounds like he is making a contribution to the mortgage, not paying the whole thing.

Parents should pay 50% of the cost of raising their children, whether they live with them or no. So the mother of OP's step children, if living alone, would need a one bedroom flat. I would expect the absent parent, if there are two children, to be funding 50% of the difference in cost between a 3 bedroom and a one bedroom property. Plus their half of the children's food costs, the incremental cost of utilities etc that relate to the children, their clothes, uniform, activities, childcare etc. How is this even remotely controversial, that if you create a child you should pay half of the cost of housing and raising them?

Any decent person would do that, and it is shocking and yet another sign of the misogyny in society that the law does not compell this. Even the US is far harder on maintenance than the UK! Compelling payment, and payments that are far higher.

A decent person however, does not need to be compellled by the law to do so. Leaving a relationship is fine. Not providing for your children is not fine, it is despicable. And anybody choosing to create more children with somebody who doesn't even meet their basic moral responsibility to pay for half or their child's upbringing is insane, in my opinion, because there could not be a clearer demonstration of moral failing as a human being. If somebody has no regard for their own children's welfare, what kind of partner would you expect them to be? Or that somehow they would magically have more regard for the children they create subsequently? Mad.

With regard to the specific financial arrangements in this case, it is unusual these days to continue to jointly own a house with an ex-partner, although in some divorce cases this still happens. Generally it's better to divide assets at the point of separation, but sometimes it's not possible still to do that while maintaining stability for the children, whose needs should be prioritised.

Maintenance can be considered - if regularly paid and this can be demonstrated and it's drawn up in a legal agreement - by mortgage providers as part of income. So it might be possible for example for the mother of the older children in this situation to take on the mortgage on her own if an appropriate legal agreement is drawn up stating that their father will continue to pay maintenance until the children are 18 at the current rates (plus uprating for inflation) and that the house will be sold and his share of the equity built up until now released to him at that point. That might be worth exploring for a cleaner financial split. But he should still be paying a sufficient amount to cover his 50% of the cost of raising his children, yes. And factor this necessity into any future financial plans or commitments he is making. That's just doing the very minimum to be a decent parent.

But he can still pay 50% or whatever the arrangement is even if the house is sold? No one is saying he shouldn't pay maintenance towards housing costs.

Basically decisions have consequences. Having children is a huge commitment financially and otherwise. And if you are a decent person you suck up the consequences of that, however it pans out. I can't imagine anything more revolting than a parent who refuses to pay their 50% share of the costs of raising their child(ren). I can't imagine why anybody creates subsequent children with people who don't do this. And I can't imagine the mentality or thought processes of somebody who starts a relationship wjth a man with very young children (one of whom was still a baby!) and decides to move in with him, have another child with him knowing in advance that he had these existing financial commitments, and then complain about it and start hatching plans to turf his older children out of their home because she would like a larger house than they can afford without him going back on the financial commitments he had already to his older kids. Vile.

But he would still pay 50% or whatever he pays now, but that doesn't mean he has to keep his money tied up in a house his ex lives in. That's a separate issue to maintenance.

It's not "a house his ex lives is". It's his children's home.

But he can still pay 50% or whatever the arrangement is even if the house is sold? No one is saying he shouldn't pay maintenance towards housing costs.

Why would it need to be sold, then? If he will still be paying his same financial contribution per month as now then the older children's mother should be able to take over the mortgage in her name only and him be released from the deeds, and a legal agreement can be put in place with him having a charge over the house so that when the house is sold - once the older children are adults - he will be given back his share of the equity built up to date. That way the issue of him already owning a property is removed, he would simply have a charge over the property upon sale. But then he'd still need to pay the same amount per month that he does now... and I suspect this is what the OP does not like. She thinks he should reduce his financial support for his older children because she and he decided to have another child and she wants more spare income to buy a large property with lots of spare bedrooms, even if it means the older children lose their home. Not cool.

I wonder if people arguing in the ex's defence would still say so if she had an affair which led to the end of the marriage? And what if she moved said man into the home?

Maybe you would say it should be sold then. See, it's not really about the kids is it?

*relationship, not marriage

It's not "a house his ex lives is". It's his children's home.

Exactly. And if they did what I'd suggested he'd get that money back later, secured by legal agreement.

Why should his ex's money be tied up in the larger property required to house their children but his should not? So his new child, he can have money "tied up" in a house for them to live in, but not for his older children, who require a larger house to live in than their mother would if living alone? Why shouldn't his money be "tied up" in that with a charge over the house to get it back when they are adults? But ok for him to have money "tied up" in the 5 bedroom property the OP wants, that presumably he'd also not need if living alone?

OP has stated they have sufficient money to buy a new house for their new family unit. So there is literally no argument for doing this to the older children who have been through so much already, other than "OP would like to have a big house with spare rooms even if it means the older children lose their home".

Disgusting tbh.

Everything I've said is about the children's needs and the parents meeting their responsibilities to them and putting them first.