ex using money to cut time with child

[meanex]

Have nc for this as frightened of outing myself.

Ex and I split 3 years ago. I was in a really bad place at time of split, have history of depression and self harm, self harming had got out of control mainly due to being so unhappy with ex.

Because he didn't trust my menus health, ex took me to court for ds. They decided test he should have residency and I should have contact.

It's been that way since. I've steadily increased my contact since, by improving myself then going back to court and obtaining more time. Nowadays I probably have more waking time with ds than ex but because ds school is literally feet away from where ex lives ds still spends more overnights with him than me. I think it works out I have him 10 nights and ex has him 20.

I give ex money for maintenance. I have a low paying job so I give him 140 a month.

In Jan ex told me that he was going on holiday in June for 2 weeks. He asked me to have ds for these weeks and of course I was happy to, I was so looking forward to it.

For the month of June, I reduced his payment by 50 pounds because ds was going to be with me more nights than with ex. I still gave him 100.

2 days before ex was due to leave he told me he wasn't going on holiday after all. He refused to still let me take ds and demanded the 50 pounds. He blackmailed me saying that he would go to court again and reduce my time if I didn't give him the money. I had a few extra nights arranged with ds in the summer hols and now he's cancelled all of them.

I'm confused and don't know if I'm being U.

Makes no difference. You cannot just cut maintanence without discussing it.

Do you pay £150 per month or do you pay that plus extras for clothes, school trips, school stuff...etc?

You should still go to court to get more official time with your DS.
Unfortunately your Ex is not acting in your son's best interest by reducing time in the summer.

If you're more stable now, try and get 50/50 formally. That's your best bet. That will stop him cutting your time with DS like this.

Sorry waking/sleeping time makes no difference in my mind.

And if you don't get along, you must have known cutting maintenance would have antagonised him.

In this case I really think formalising arrangements is the way forward!

If my ex started cutting maintenance for the reasons you provided I would be in court at the earliest opportunity!

Did you discuss the reduction in maintenance with him or not?

You cannot unilaterally decide to reduce maintenance because of a holiday. It doesn't work like that. If my ex tried this with me, I would be furious. Your ex still has all the associated costs of a child. He needs to pay rent, heating, electricity etc regardless of whether you have more waking time or not. If my ex paid less maintenance on a whim I might not be able to afford my gas bill.

Your ex hasn't covered himself in glory by using your child to get at you, but your behaviour does you no favours either.

TBH then you need to change the contact agreement so that you have your DS overnight if money is the issue for you.

Sadly CMS is worked out as overnights!!! Your DS doesn't need to bath at your house that is your choice etc.

I'm actually glad this thread exists as it shows female NRP's can be as bad as male ones!

Ywbvu to cut maintenance that's not money to your ex that is covering the costs of raising your child (and 50% of raising a child costs more than £140 a month so you're already getting a massive discount!)

Children are not ppv as has been said BUT they do cost

Op how much would half your outgoings be? More than £140 a month I'll bet

I'm shocked that you think dropping maintenance is ok.

The dropping maintenance was antagonistic. You shouldn't have done that.

But how is it costing the ex more, the op still has to find a two bed property plus clothes, more food than the ex, more electricity and gas than her ex as her ds is awake when with her.
Op I would ask for 50/50 as a minimum at court.

You should not be reducing maintenance unless you agreed it with him first. The cost of housing, council tax etc does not go away or drop just because the child isn't there for a week.

But the op has those costs too and more.

Then And OP needs to sort it out formally not just drop the maintenance. Who knows what that money was earmarked for?? Childcare?? Uniform?? We don't know

It doesn't matter if it costs more for her than him, you can't do this without both parties agreeing to it.
If you want it to change you have to either talk to him or go back to court.

As for living costs, if you are indoors all day long every day then yeah it might be more expensive but generally people tend to leave the house during the day and don't use lights and so forth. We also have no idea the size of their individual properties so possibly his is bigger than hers, if she is low income which would cost more to run.

Finally really if it comes down to living costs being more important than getting along with your ex so that you can see your child, have flexibility, rebuild broken trust and set a good example to the child well that is priceless. We would all like more money/to pay less money out but in reality you have to learn to budget for extras such as holidays and day trips. I have been the parent trying to pay the council tax while the other one is off with kids at Chessington World of Aventures and if they tried to reduce my maintence so that it would be funded towards the fun trip out well then I would be fuming

Also I would like to add when you are the resident parent and you get your child for the nights, (especially more so when they begin school) it's sometimes quite difficult to reconcile that the non resident parent is getting the 'good times' in the day time/weekends while they are awake and can go and have fun. I think it is unfair to the ex to paint him as entirely unreasonable when he clearly has probably lost plenty of sleep on many nights with a young child, then doesn't get to always do the fun stuff in the day AND gets penalised financially despite prior agreement being set up. I don't know what the answer is but you can't have it all. You might have to suck up the costs and just put the child's needs first?

Maybe if you could see each other's sides of the story it would make more sense as to why he reacted the way he did.