This feels like financial abuse, how is it legal?

[Hirtui]

i am in a good career but working my way up so still on a low ish salary. The career has lots to go at though and I invested a lot of money in uni courses to get here.

my ex partner is ten years older and established in the same industry and earning 100k. He is refusing maintenance and now has taken a sabbatical for 12 months, due to start in a month which is two months before I am due to go back to work. I literally cannot afford to go back to work with the childcare costs. I am not eligible for help and my rent is as cheap as can be for the area. I am stuck. I am devastated as I will be able to re join the career at a later date but my career will also be extremely damaged by taking time out, not to mention I have no idea what other work I will now do, probably nothing? Am I supposed to get a loan out while our child’s father keeps his money? It feels like financial abuse and yet this is legal?

If he's taking a year's sabbatical can't he look after your DC while you work? No childcare costs then.

Marriage is a contract. If you want to be protected legally you need a contract.

Being pragmatic about marriage being the way to increased financial security when a couple has children isn’t the same as thinking it’s fair he can choose not to support his child. Don’t lash out at people because your ex is screwing you over, they haven't done anything to you.

Asset sharing is an opt in system as it should be.

When you had a child with him you were two legally single people and now you’ve split you’re seeing that in theory you both made a commitment to your child but not to each other. That piece of paper would have entitled you to a chunk of his assets. Decide not to get one and this is what can happen.

He won’t be earning while on sabbatical and child support is a percentage of income so how do you imagine it working? He happens to be choosing not to earn for a year but you’d be in the same boat if he was sacked or ill or injured or died.

Not really. If you marry someone then you're legally one entity and you would have had rights over his assets when you split up. That's the law. I agree that men should have to pay for their kids whatever, but choosing to take the path that gives you no legal protection in the event of a split is crazy.

What's doubly annoying is that by him choosing not to pay his child the taxpayer loses.

So the money that you & he would have paid in tax by being employed and the job you would have created by paying for childcare is all being lost because he fancies a year sitting on his arse and he wants you and the British taxpayer to make up the shortfall whilst he does so.

This is why people should be making more of a fuss about men walking away from their responsibilities.

If it was put in pounds and pence the money that the taxpayer's spent on providing for children whose parents refused to provide for them there would be a national outcry.

It's a ridiculous system that is long-overdue a change.

You are trying to parent, plus build a career, plus provide for your child and you're being prevented by a person who wants to take a year off; it's shit.

How is financial abuse? Your career is not his problem anymore.

So it is not abuse legally but it is abuse because you say so. Nice.

Your right it shouldn't be this way but unfortunately you choose to have a child with a waste of space.

Presumably she didn't choose to have a child with a waste of space. Presumably she chose to have a child with her partner and then found out he's a waste of space.

That is ridiculous. A lot of mothers decide to take a 12-year sabbatical and rely on benefits and CMS because they want to enjoy the children. Nobody tells them is abuse! Ridiculous misandrist lies.

It’s post separation abuse as still a way of maintaining a level of control. It’s very common of abusive partners to do this especially those who are self employed. My ex pays £7.50 a week for 4 children but can afford 3 plus foreign holidays a year, fancy meals, clothes etc it’s a fraudulent system.

Because he's deliberately depriving his ex and their joint child of the means to support themselves. If OP gave up her job and said she wasn't paying for her child to eat and for somewhere to live the child would be removed and it would be abuse.

I'm in favour of a system where not only the absent parent's current situation is taken into account but also their earning potential. Deliberately depriving the RP by not working should be treated like the government treat people who give away money to avoid care fees or inheritance tax. Criminalise these wasters.

As a @taxpayer1 surely you want the dad to pay not your taxes!

Being married diesnt protect you! I was married, we had no assets despite ex earning a six figure salary, so I got a tiny settlement (less than 5k after divorce costs).
I gave up work to be a sahm (joint decision) so am on a very low wage. My ex pays no maintainance as he has our dc roughly 50/50 officially (though often less in reality) and has decided that my giving up over a decades work so he could build up to this salary is not his issue but mine.
the system is set to screw you over if you choose to be a sahm.
this is why you should a) never trust a marriage will last. b) never place your financial future in someone elses hands.
op. Claim UC. Thats what its there for. You can stop once you earn enough.

No help in your situation but I think non payment of CMS should be considered child neglect.

If a resident parent refused to spend money on things their children needed then it would be neglect.

Why should it be different for the non resident parent.

I wonder if it's worth asking MNHQ to do a campaign. It is one of the most important issues affecting women and children.

Of course. But I also don't like the option for RP to choose to work less than full time but nobody is claiming is financial abuse. I agree he should pay what I don't agree with is that is financial abuse. Everything is financial abuse these days. It's ridiculous.

I think this is a great idea. I WISH I had been more savvy. We had so many discussions over the years about how our choices were leaving me vulnerable financially if we split and so many promises made that I’d never be left without financially as ex knew the career sacrifices I was making.

It all changes when you leave. History gets re written. Joint chices get rewritten as ‘your’ choices.

I think this is why SO many women stay in unhappy marriages. (Tbf men too).

I dont know many women that would leave their ex’s in the same position knowing that its actually the kids who ultimately suffer.

No, it won't. thousand and thousand of women live on benefits and CMS and nobody considers it neglect.

Does he see DD at all? If he's not working can you not drop her off at his and go to work?

It is absolutely financial abuse, intentionally depriving his child of financial support in order to control and disadvantage his ex partner. I believe it meets the legal test of what financial abuse is, but very sadly it’d be very difficult to prove this is his deliberate intention and not an unfortunate by-product of his right to choose to take a sabbatical.

And being married would make zero difference in this scenario, to the PP who is somehow trying to suggest the OP brought this on herself. Also, even if she’d received a share of marital assets had they been married and divorced, that is not the same as child maintenance and using it in that way has the same effect - eroding the woman’s resources in order to cover for the father’s withholding of finance for the child.

It's child abuse. I've experienced similar op.

Legally it isn’t.

One of the only things I like about the USA system is they go after feckless fathers, and the debt isn't written off at 18.
It's absolutely morally financial abuse of you and your child. It may not meet the legal definition, but it's morally corrupt.

Whilst I'm not sure you have any legal standing to make him contribute (although he totally should!) it certainly fits the bill of Economic abuse:

Controlling and coercive behaviour that has an adverse effect on someone's resources, such as housing, food, transport, employment and includes financial abuse. ^
^
I have no advice to offer I'm afraid just wanted to validate your feelings of abuse. It definitely sounds like he is controlling your ability to work and progress in a career by refusing to take responsibility of raising his DC.