Another thread about splitting finances in a couple..

[wozzle95]

This time we are unmarried. We have one child together and I am step mum to his 2 kids.

He earns mega bucks. Over a seven figure sum. I used to have the same career and earned six figures and was on track to earn much more. But we decided if we had kids, we'd never see them if i worked those hours and also a perfect less hours' less money job came along which i took shortly before i got pregnant. (I ended up hating it and had i not got pregnant would have gone back into previous high earning job at a different company).

We are not married. He lost a lot in his first divorce and is therefore v reticent. I accepted this and that it might take some time (if ever) to change his mind. Have started work again too but very part time..a few hours' here and there very sporadically. Am too busy being mum, cook, cleaner, taxi, gardener etc to manage much more at this point (my child is only a toddler). I expect to earn maybe £25k this year.

Now OH is saying if I earned more like 40k or over, he'd expect me to contribute towards our bills. I instead believe I need to save this for my own financial security. On top of his seven figure salary he has about another million in assets. I feel this is very unfair and that my sacrifice of my career should be compensated a little, married or not. AIBU? Yes I went into this with my eyes open. Nor would I expect anything like joint pooling of assets. I'd just like to know views on whether my view is reasonable that I should receive some recognition for the sacrifice (which also enables him to do his job...he has always been very vocal that he does not believe kids fare best with 2 working parents). It's also not always as simple as 'well you should have waited for someone to marry'...we fell in love and have a beautiful child and I feel very blessed. I am also older and time was not on my side to argue the marriage issue before conceiving.

On the half mum point that came from the kids not him. And on the divorce payments he has often said he wouldn't have minded about thr money but his ex had an affair and then treated him (and still does ) like the crap on her shoe despite the fact her and her new husband live in an amazing house bought by my OH and she gets a frankly ridiculous amount of money as she is on a six figure salary herself and re married amd does not contribute a penny to cost of kids. Our lawyer said only sheikhs paid out the level of maintenance he used to pay but he was so stressed at the time of the divorce he couldn't face the battle.

It never reached court he didn't push it. He was so stressed he thought he might have to stop work so thought it better to pay out and move on.

Yes i will need advice on his entitlement to equity in the flat. Can prob be covered off in a pre nup style contract. Flat is worth £600k so more than enough really but yes i agree this needs to be paid off as a priority. I know he can change his will but that's a bit irrelevant in my mind. We are either together and happy before he died in which case he won't change it or unhappy and separating in which case it is more about the situation if he leaves me. I am very happy raising my son and being at home and i appreciate that carries risks being out of the workplace for a bit..it's just a case of me trying to work out what a degree of reasonable protection is. I don't think that is deluded. Perhaps I am a bit naive in having been happyish with status quo so far because in answer to the questions about what i do for my step kids (i'll call them that for ease despite the technicality), I do everything a mum would do. Buy them clothes, bath them, feed them, sew their name tags into uniform, de louse them, sort out their playdates, try and stop them spending too much time on their ipads, make their beds, give them cuddles, listen to their day at school..i don't know..normal life! They really don't feel massively different to my son though i know that is hard for mums to hear. In terms of OH, I spend my life cleaning and sorting the house and general admin that everyone else does. The never ending list we all have. Insurance. Doctors for jabs. Getting handyman to fix the broken door. Sorting out tuition for step kids. Etc.

Nb his brother has married three times so it's clearly not genetic!

That's not "everything a mum would do".
It's "everything a parent should do".
And he has outsourced de-lousing his kids to you, whilst decimating your earnings because he thinks both parents shouldn't work.

He gets very offended if i ever show any difference in feeling between our son and my step children. Luckily there isn't much and we are a very happy family unit for the most part. Is it right that he should still be responsible for doing all the things I do for his kids?

I'm honestly not being facetious, this is a genuine question because I never understand this situation.... why would you join your lives together forever with a child but not share your money?

Yes i see your point. I guess the answer is because people change, people have affairs, get divorced (his experience so far) so why should they walk away again with half your hard earned assets?

Neither of us expect that to happen but i guess you never know. Hence the market for pre nups.

Don't get me wrong, my point is not that they are his kids and therefore you shouldn't do a thing. Of course in a family everyone pitches in.

My point is that you are living the consequence of his decision to have a "wife" do his share.

And that's fine if it is a decision that you make together and which doesn't disadvantage you.

But it rather sounded upthread like it was driven by him not you. He decided you should slash your earnings and possibly damage your career.

I am a bit at him being "offended" if you don't feel the kids about all the kids. Interested what form "offended" takes.

All friends of mine in blended families - and I'm in one myself - acknowledge that each parent loves their own child more. Still strive not to show that and treat them the same. But you should be able to be honest with your own partner.

Hi OP

I'm another poster who believes that you need to go back to work to safeguard your and your son's future.

I'm a lone parent. My Ex pays CSA minimum (and he's on a good salary). Our house though was in joint names. And I went back to work after having DD. Mope, it wasn't easy. But when we split up, I knew that I had a job and could support us.

I think he's taking you for a ride. I agree with PP that what he says about you being a half-mum is awful: how would you feel if you split from your DP and heard him describe his new gf in those terms? I also agree that he's saying things like that to keep you sweet.

He's all about protecting HIS money/assets and that's clearly how he sees them, as HIS. You need to look out for you and your son.

I still don't believe that she just walked away with half his assets and he was too stressed to outsource a proper settlement to a solicitor, which he could well afford. Which if she had the affair, he wouldn't even have felt guilty about a fair settlement.

You don't earn over a million a year and be unable to handle a bit of stress. Or as I say, outsource it all.

I think he's hiding behind that bullshit and that it was a fair settlement.

So that's fine if he wants a pre nup. I'm having one. But I'm at the usual "my XW took all my money" pity party.

My DH and I are both high earners. I refused to have children with him until we were married. I still work FT (and will continue to) and we pay everything 50/50 but I still wanted the protection of marriage as my Plan B.

In your situation I think I would focus on maintaining your employability. It sounds like you are not stretched at all in terms of your current lifestyle (obv tell him to eff off re contributing to bills etc) so I'd be future proofing your earning capacity. Can you continue to do eg 3 months a year of contracting/interim work? The opportunity cost of stepping off the FT ladder is galling but given that you feel it's in your son's best interest to be at home I'd not focus on the opp cost and instead think about a Plan B.

But overall I do think you need to think of yourself as a separate financial entity. That's a bit of a different mindset to being married. If your DP doesn't like the consequences of that he knows what to do

Stealth banana that is an excellent idea thanks

If you incorporate a ltd company you can minimise the impact on your career as you can fudge a little bit your projects eg "Stealth Banana Consulting, between Jan 2016 and Jan 2019 I worked on the following projects X Y and Z". So long as you're doing what you need to do to be credible in the workplace if you decided to step back in I think it's doable.

Good luck!

Our lawyer said only sheikhs paid out the level of maintenance he used to pay but he was so stressed at the time of the divorce he couldn't face the battle.

I don't know how old you are, OP, but I'm almost 40 and every almost every single divorced men I know have a line like this that they trot out in subsequent relationships.

And why on earth you're doing all that traditional wife-work for someone who won't marry you is beyond me.

But your eyes are open, at least.

Good luck.

How about HE takes some fucking responsibility for the kids he chose to have and actually doing some of the donkey work involved. He sees you as an unpaid nanny/ domestic appliance with a vagina attatched.

waits to be told his ex came off the Pill without telling him which would STILL be no excuse.

Somerville i am 40 too and i heard it with my own ears from the barrister!

Also i hope i am not making out like he is a v absent dad. He's not around in the week much but at weekends he is v hands on. Also de louses! Cooks. Baths. Etc etc

"i heard it with my own ears from the barrister"
Well, he or she would say that, wouldn't they, because they're buttering up the client. They'll hardly say to their client and his new DP, well you're not paying enough there.

Mimsy not sure that's true in this instance. The comment came about as we were trying to assess the correct level of maintenance to offer her to avoid court (based on previous cases in his experience). He was clearly way off in his previous payments. My friend is a family law solicitor and confirmed the amounts were way off and should never have been agreed ( he had awful legal advice at the time).

Ah yes, that well known believable source, the barrister.

Listen, maybe - maybe - he paid too much to his ex-wife. Though it sounds like it's been to court now, and I don't understand why he didn't have the nous to do so before.

But there are pre-nups to protect assets, so that's not even really the point.

If you weren't delousing and taxi-ing your 'step-kids' all week, when he has them, who would be? He'd either pay for 2 different nannies, in shifts, and a housekeeper, like some wealthy men I know. Or do like some other lone-parent fathers and most lone-parent mothers and change his hours (often that means changing careers to something less competitive, like I have done as a lone parent) so that he can work from home or shorter hours on the weeks he has his children.

But he's not prepared to do that. No, he wants you to step down from a high earning job, to have your own child and his others, so that they're not looked after by nannies. And yet he not only won't give you the many securities of marriage but wants you to contribute a proportion of the bills on the very average salary you can earn as a result of what he wants.

I hope that at the very least, you will stick a line in the sand about not contributing to household expenses all the time that you are saving him childcare costs by sacrificing so much of your own income. That should be non-negotiable.

Yes agreed re household expenses from now on. In truth if I didn't do it, his parents would. They'd become live in housekeepers/ chauffeur/nanny.

Ergo he values a bit less what I do. Because in a jiffy his mum would.