ExH and money, please give me some advice.

[Witchofthenorth]

Hi all,

My ExH messaged me this morning basically saying I had to pay for the kids passports in order for him to take them on holiday in around a month. Not only that, because of the time scale, I would need to go to the local passport office (6 hour round trip) to get them.

Now, I have a couple of issues with this, the first one being that I don't see why I should have to pay for the renewals which would be £100 that I don't have, and the other being that I am self employed and my business is seasonal, therefore, I am now working pretty much everyday now for the next 4/6 weeks.

I told him that I couldn't pay it and I didn't have time to go to the passport office and that he would have to sort it and now he is saying that because of this I won't be receiving any maintenance for the next two weeks for him to be able to pay for the passports. (He pays me £55 per week for 4 children)

When I said that that wouldn't work as I need the child maintenance ( I hate that I am still beholden to him), he had a proper go at me for not helping him take OUR children on a holiday that they would enjoy and basically I am lucky he is only asking for me to pay the passports, I should be thankful that's all he is asking for.

I don't know where to go from here, I basically see no choice but to go two weeks with no money from him because if I say I absolutely need that money now, he told me he would just take it back another time.

What can/should I do?

How about putting down just a couple thousand more than he was earning 6 years ago and see what it comes out just out of interest? It doesn’t get filed anywhere it’s just a calculator anyone can use.

Sort it through CMS and tell your Ex send the money for the passports or they will not be getting one.

Either way you look at it he is making you pay.. what a sod, but make him do the running around as he will have petrol and food on top of the passports themselves and you would lose a day's work.

He does not realise by being a dick it will cost him more.

Well, I called him out (thank you ladies) and he is now paying for the passports. But obviously am the bad one. He was only asking for help, it's ok I'll pay, wouldn't want you to tell anyone you were forced into something blah blah fucking blah!

It's just one of many things really. He does shit like this every now and again. Last time it was keeping the kids after a holiday and telling me they weren't coming home. I'm sure there is a thread somewhere about it on here. Been quiet since then so I really should have known something would come up soon.

I'd still go to CMS.

What's his job? How often does he have the kids overnight?

He has them EOW @burnyburny. He is a self employed driving instructor for HGV and coaches.

They will use his declared income as to HMRC, HMRC are quite hot on investigating driving instructors if they think their declared income is too low...

Well then he'll be earning a decent hourly rate. At bare minimum, £20 an hour I'd bet.

Using that figure on only a 30 hour working week, and having the kids 1-2 night per week, the calculator says he should be paying you £93 a week.

Go to the CMS for the child maintenance and stop him messing around.

WRT passports - his holiday, his responsibility to pay for them and organise them.

Well done for standing up to him. Keep doing that.