Ex husband's bitterness towards having to pay maintenance

[Autumnnights2022]

Long story short - married a long time. Husband had an affair and got OW pregnant within 3 months of knowing her. Needless to say, he wanted to end the marriage. I did not.
He dragged me through the courts at eye watering costs and has been made to pay a percentage of his salary as maintenance until he retires. We have two kids together.
Move forward 6 years (since we divorced) and he continues to be an utter arse about money, however, he does this via our children as he and I have no contact. He's forever telling our now adult kids that 'he's skint' (then OW posts photos of them on yet another holiday abroad) and yesterday, he told our daughter that the birthday money he promised for her birthday 10 days ago ' would be late, as I have to pay your mum money... so I'll have to ask work for an advance'. Note that 3 weeks ago he had enough money for a deposit on a 4-bed house.
I just don't get it. He used to be the kindest and most generous bloke who loved his kids dearly (he now has two more tiny kids and an extended family in the Philippines).

It's forensic maybe, but it is still sometimes awarded when it shouldn't be. Depends on the judge and the day.

Have you ever thought about supporting yourself and being a real adult?

It probably wasn't, not in this day and age. It's quite normal for both parents to work these days and a luxury for one to stay at home. That luxury is normally the choice of the one who does stay at home. We need to move away from the 1950s stereotypes that no longer exist and start making people take personal responsibility for themselves.

The courts are very unwilling to engage in this topic too. If you read the judgment in the Waggott case the judge was quite keen to point out that they would not be engaging in any exercises to measure disadvantage and that SM was solely to meet needs to avoid undue hardship.

I don't think I've ever seen a man who wasn't bitter about paying CM or SM.
It's entitlement. Men used to doing what they want and getting their way and to be forced to do something probably for the first time in their life, really gets to them.

Extended family in the Philippines? It he bitter about having to pay them?

I receive SM

zero guilt or feeling pathetic. And my ex has no issue whatsoever with paying SM.

why? Because we were both in professional well paid roles in finance. I gave up following first child as a joint decision. His career absolutely flourished and earning exponentially increased. Post divorce…. I was 12 years “behind” him.

it’s going to piss you off @BetterFuture1985 but I am afraid to say… for me it’s the icing on the cake that it seems rile some mumsnetters permeably flogging their guts out working full time with limited financial support.

There is a problem if you assume..

I now have an MBA and work and get paid very well. He works and is an investment banker.

Judges are qualified. Our judge is incredibly well respected.

Whether you think they make decisions that you wouldn't make is, well, one most of the most immaterial comments I have read on this topic.

Ah just seen on another thread

@BetterFuture1985 is a man. Divorced. And very very much the angry bitter ex!!! 😂

oh and @BetterFuture1985

please pass on my congrats to your wife…. She got herself a good lawyer!

ps and she’s got her head screwed on and knew your demands for receipts were thankfully completely unreasonable and no judge on the planet would force that! 😂

Just let your adult children work it out for themselves, I am sure they will.

As for your spousal maintenance, well it is what it is, he is court ordered to pay it, not to be happy about paying it.

Well that explains his position on here. No sympathy from.me

Doesn’t it just?! 😂

To be fair I've just read his thread and it looks like his ex wife pushed for a residence split that she knowingly couldn't maintain so she could get more financial support, and then days later asked to go back to their usual child care arrangements without reducing that financial support. That is reprehensible 🤷🏻‍♀️ not to mention the affairs...

It's probably enough to make you a bitter ex!

I’d put money on it being his interpretation bullshit given the bitter - “why don’t you support yourself” to the OP.

@Doingprettywellthanks definitely a possibility, but it makes more sense to me that he has been screwed over, otherwise the bitterness wouldn't make any sense. Not that it excuses his comments to OP.

I also find it strange how gleeful you are at the prospect of his ex wife misusing the legal system for her financial benefit, congratulating her on her solicitor etc.

But as has been made explicit on this very thread

what is objectively reasonably
and what causes an ex to feel bitter

are often at opposite ends of the scale

Because based on his very comment on this thread and indeed the thread he started and his posts - he sounds like an enraged bitter man who is aggressive in his arguments on thread - that I support his ex wholeheartedly and very much doubt she screwed the system. Again, your source is hardly objective is it?

My source is hardly objective, but you don't even have one 😵‍💫

my “source” is the poster in question

his opinions, his thread and his post.

@Doingprettywellthanks hang on, so he's credible for you to form an opinion on, but not for me?

It's bizarre that you blindly support an alleged lying cheating ex wife on the basis that her ex husband is bitter, but aren't supporting the OPs lying, cheating ex husband.

You don't make much sense.

She didn't do that well, we avoided court and she didn't get spousal maintenance. This whole thread proves what a lot of people think about spousal maintenance though, it is primarily enjoyed by recipients as a way to humiliate, control and financially abuse their ex-spouse. The irony though is that there is something rather pathetic in sponging off an ex-partner and being an adult who is incapable of looking after themselves.

Sympathy from a pathetic kidult who is incapable of looking after themselves is not something I actively seek 😂

That's lovely, but most people who get spousal maintenance over the long term (as in past the children turning 18, rather than for one or two years which is more understandable) tend to be people who never in a million years would have been capable of obtaining and holding down a job that paid that much themselves. To get spousal maintenance after the children have grown up these days, a court has to look at you and basically conclude that you are too pathetic to look after yourself. I'm afraid that's the truth of it because nowadays term maintenance that is substantive and that ends when the children are 11 is the norm because most people are assumed capable of getting a job that pays enough to look after themselves.

Spousal maintenance used to make sense in an era when inequality in the workplace meant it was hard to get a job if you were a mother with school age children. Nowadays, it is seldom if ever appropriate unless the wretch in front of the judge is so pathetic that they can't meet their own basic needs by getting a job like normal people.

Christ there are some mean women on here!

spousal mtnce ordered by the judge.

thats it.

op ignore it all. Get out there and enjoy life.

I thought spousal maintenance was pretty much gone except in cases of very long marriages where women had given up careers to support husbands?

I didn’t think it was awarded except nominal amounts if the woman is capable of work and supporting herself. I know my dbro had to pay his ex wife 5p a year or something ridiculous- i have no idea why she had to be awarded anything though?

Or better yet be an adult and get a proper job that supports your spending!

Ah, nominal maintenance! It's nearly as ridiculous as spousal maintenance as it basically treats the payer as an insurance against something going wrong for the payee. So basically someone on modestly high wages can find themselves guaranteeing to step in and start paying substantive maintenance if, for example, the recipient becomes disabled. It's an utter nonsense because it's unreasonable to expect the payer to start paying substantive maintenance to someone because of a disadvantage that wasn't related to the marriage! And in fact case law has now started to decide that it's unreasonable to expect payers to step in to help out when things go wrong for the payee for reasons unrelated to the marriage.

A much simpler solution would be a lump sum on divorce to buy critical illlness, accident and life insurance like normal people 😂I gave my wife about £500 to shut her up about nominal maintenance for this very purpose. I just don't have pockets as deep as Canada Life or Aviva for these sorts of things!