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).

Second wives club out in force today!
My bf gets spousal maintenance - until he retires as that would just about cover the amount he owes her but currently can not afford to pay her in a lump sum.

He can not buy her out of the house due to his piss poor credit rating despite being ultra high earner and he can not buy anywhere because no one would give him a mortgage. Not sure how it got agreed or the full details - BF has well paid job but this is effectively her share of assets over time ad allowing her DCS to have somewhere to stay with their dead beat father.

Not sure I would have gone with it but she is happy, he moans about it to all who will listen and forgets to tell everyone he has paid v little of joint assets.

Wildly off mark. You are bitter and sound more so with every post.

I get it, it doesn't sound like there is much money to go around between you and your ex and that would be stressful. But that is not the case for all.

My ex and I have a great relationship. He is happy with paying SM. If he loses his job and I need to pay something to him, so be it. I can and would. Our children are in similar homes, we live close enough to each other that the kids can walk/ cycle. We socialise. For us it was making our divorce have the minimum impact on them, both financially and emotionally. We are still a team in that sense, despite being in new relationships ourselves.

Ex wife of @BetterFuture1985

🍾

Exactly the same here

my ex recognised that at the point when we were about to really make huge leaps in our respective careers…. I went on maternity leave and then didn’t return for ten years.

my ex is a good man, brilliant father, and very high earner. I receive SM and will do until youngest is 18. Never even a whiff of a problem about him paying. In five years I have never ever not once had to chase him. And needless to say - no CMS involvement needed.

our children are happy and settled with divorced parents that take them out together for birthday celebrations, Christmas events and regularly go for coffees together to catch up on logistics and general gossip

As is clear from @BetterFuture1985 post on another thread where he’s explains how profoundly he hates his current existence and as soon as he can - he will be leaving the country (I imagine his ex is counting down the days) - the bitterness that some have towards their ex partner actually negatively effects them likely more than anyone else!

Oh and sadly the kids involved

That is the one aspect that really is upsetting. The tit for tat hurts them. That is a fact. Even as adults.

To add to confusion, ex-husbands job was abroad, hence why I missed out on many, many years of following my own career, despite working full time when we were aboard but on a much lower salary and not in my dream job as there wasn't the option for that due to language barriers and visas.
Money was saved up for a house back in the UK and life was looking rosy (in my mind, hence why I say I didn't want a divorce ...initially!).
Kids are grown up and have jobs. No maintenance for them of course due to their ages. I get maintenance as the courts make sure that in a long marriage and life aboard, both spouses should get equal etc.
The crux of my question was simply down to why he constantly tells our kids he has no money when clearly, he does. Why hold back on birthday presents when surely, they should be a priority over buying new white goods and redecorating new house (I only know this info from what my kids relay).

@Autumnnights2022 oh just seen your last post. Just tell your kids he’s bitter and your entitled to spousal maintenance wether he likes it or not. He wouldn’t have to pay it if he hadn’t married you and he chose to leave.

You don't "get it" at all. My opposition to spousal maintenance is not directly associated with the money as such, it's the legal obligation that restricts the freedom of one of the divorcing parties for the benefit of the other. In my case, my ex-wife was a coercive controlling and emotionally abusive woman and if there had been an order for periodical payments I would have ended up in a situation where I continued to be controlled by her both in respect of what I did for a living and where I made that living. I've seen in the posts both directly replying to me and others here the sheer delight in the abusive control that recipients of maintenance enjoy over their ex-partners, especially from those who don't really need it.

If you are ordered to pay spousal maintenance you are essentially deemed to be capable of earning a certain amount and expected to continue earning that amount. Whilst the weaker financial party is entitled to move on with their life, have a fresh start and find a new career, the payer is expected to pay that maintenance no matter what. There is no guarantee of a variation if they choose to have a fresh start or change careers. When I was married the agreement with my wife would be that I would stay in my stressful job that involved a long commute to London until our youngest started school and then find something more local once she could start working. At around the time I would have been looking for such a career change, I discovered she was a serial cheat who had multiple partners on the go at any one time and eventually I initiated divorce.

From that day forward she tried everything she could to keep me exactly where she wanted, as the provider of her lifestyle (both financially and as the primary carer of the children) whilst she would work and commit herself to the family as little as possible. That included demanding to be the resident parent for our children purely for financial reasons and demanding spousal maintenance from me at a ridiculous level that would have seen her not working but taking more than half of my net income. She obviously was never going to get that but it allowed her to draw out the process and enjoy creating stress and worry.

Had she been successful I would have been left in a situation where I would have no option but to continue working in London in a high stress environment for a very long time with no financial gain for myself. A spousal maintenance obligation is basically like having an onerous loan that never diminishes. She'd have skipped off to a lifestyle of working no more than 10 hours a week and living a lifestyle she didn't earn whilst I would have been left to be her plaything that she could control and abuse as she had throughout the marriage.

So I'm afraid I have no tolerance of any adult who expects to be kept by another adult for a long time because I think it's abusive. Sorry, but I've yet to see an example where I don't think that is the case.

What a sad sack, he is trying to punish his children for his choices in life (having an international career and a trailing spouse who he then cheated on and left). Hopefully they are now mature enough to see his tiny pity party for himself for exactly what it is.

@BetterFuture1985 yes SM can be shit but then I think marriage in general is a crap idea and does not work. It certainly seems to have fucked your life up.

My uncle was a DR and his wife was nasty, he found someone who treated him kindly and fell in love with her. You guess it was a very expensive parting all because he married the wrong woman

You don't need to explain about spousal, some of us get it who have been in similar circumstances. I get money every month and will get 25% of his company pension on retirement because I sacrificed 20 years of working life for his career. I earn barely minimum wage consequently (though I like my job and it's helping society)

I can understand why you are upset but in the nicest possible way it's not really any of your business what he spends his money on or how he prioritises it, as long as you are getting what the court has ordered.

Your kids are adults, it's up to them to have that conversation with their father if they feel it's necessary

It nearly did. Luckily my ex-wife's nonsense about spousal maintenance simply delayed the negotiating process. But yes, I did end up losing a lot of assets to someone who never would have had any prospect of accruing those assets by her own endeavour. Yet weirdly I almost feel warm inside thinking about how those assets bought my freedom and I can't make myself feel sad about losing assets in the same way as I would have been mortified by an ongoing obligation.

I'm afraid I don't endorse your uncle's behaviour though. He should have divorced first.

Did you really though? Can you honestly say, hand on heart, that the following two statements are true:

1. That you would definitely have had a well paid career had it not been for family or marriage commitments; and

2. That you definitely made enough effort to have a career as your children got older?

I've noticed that most weaker parties don't get spousal maintenance these days because they pick themselves up after divorce and have a career of their own. The only ones who really get it long term are people who never made any effort to have a career before children; didn't bother getting a job when their children started school and are therefore starting on minimum wage after divorce. And even then they only get spousal maintenance if they're married to someone on well over six figures (which begs the question if their efforts were worth SM, why not also the efforts of the person who made the same sacrifices but married to someone on £30k?)

They probably don't. The younger generation tend to be a lot more individualistic, less in favour of marriage as a concept and probably have no memory whatsoever of the "old days" when married mothers with children were not likely to work. I mean, I'm 39 and my memory of those days are hazy. I remember by secondary school most mums worked even when I was a kid.

@BetterFuture1985 yeah I don’t agree with his behaviour either.

Never spoken to him for 15 years however my aunty now single is the one of the nicest women I have the pleasure to love and have in my life.

@BetterFuture1985 Sorry forgot to add maybe she is happier now he is gone and that’s why she was nasty

Who left who in your relationship?

Oh the thread you started aboht your anger re child maintenance @BetterFuture1985 (note NOT SM but rather Child Maintenance), you admit that you have maxed your pension with the intent that CM is calculated on lesser income

now 30% rather than the 10% pre divorce in order to “claw back” what you think she has corrupted you of.

thank goodness for the tax charge if you go over £40k a year (which includes all yours and employers contributions)

This. It won’t have been awarded on a whim.

You actually say “claw back”

It was awardee in my case because my ex was a very high earner and my ex and his solicitor agreed that I’d been in a high earning career and gave up to raise our children for 10 years allowing him to extensively international travel and work very long nights and consequently see his career and earnings exponentially increase

What's wrong with 'claw back'? It's a very common phrase.