I've been separated from xh for 5 years now and during that time he has paid no child support for dd and ds. It was an extremely acrimonious split, and I don't want to bore you by going into all the details, but suffice to say he thought the split was all my fault, and did everything he could to make my life difficult afterwards. Financially, I had been the breadwinner when we were together, and for a few months after the split I continued to pay the rent/bills (I had moved out with the kids to my mum's house), until he had found a job and was able to support himself. I could go on for pages with all the details, but the long and the short of it is that he has never paid any child support, and when I have confronted him about it, he says that he doesn't think he has to pay it because he "pays" by "babysitting" the children (he has dd and ds 2 nights a week).
The reason I haven't chased him with the CSA is because I have always been scared to rock the boat - I wouldn't mind if he was just nasty to me about it, but he has repeatedly dragged the children into any dispute by slagging me off in front of them and generally saying inappropriate things in front of them. At the moment he is being quite civilised towards me and this has made a huge difference to the children - they seem much more settled and happy when things are civil between us, which is how I want it to be.
He recently had some housing problems and asked me to sign over half of the child benefit to him so that he would be given 2 bedroomed accommodation - I didn't feel comfortable about it, even though he said it was on paper only and that he would give the money straight back to me. But I figured that because the children stay with him 2 nights a week, it would be better for them if he had a bedroom for them to sleep in, so I agreed to it. Surprise, surprise - he's never given any of the money back to me
Now he has started asking to borrow money - not large amounts, but £10 here or £20 there. Again, I have agreed to it because I don't want to rock the boat, and to be fair he has paid it back when he said he would. Trouble is I feel REALLY resentful that he asks to borrow money from me - I just can't believe his cheek. What really upsets me is that when I had to leave my job and claim income support because I was unable to work through depression after we broke up, he never offered me any help at all, even though he was boasting about earning over £30K a year at the time. I later discovered he had a serious coke habit during that time which resulted in him getting into trouble with the police and temporarily losing his cab licence.
I feel so angry and resentful. He's asked to borrow more money today and I don't know what to do. HELP!