Am I being taken advantage of?

[Mofthree]

Me and DH decided to separate about 6m ago after 15 years together. He is a stay at home dad and I work full time. We decided to stay living together and he suggested that he moves out at the weekend and stays here in the week to which I agreed (I didn’t mind him staying but was also happy to agree).

He then said he didn’t feel he should pay anything into our joint account anymore as he stays at home with the children, despite the fact that he gets a good pension so I am now covering the £800 he was paying in as well as what I was paying in which is now most of my wages but I went along with it.

He has now given me a list of dates that he wants me to book off as annual leave as he has trips booked with this friends, this amounts to half of my yearly leave. Am I being fair to say no? I asked him to have the children for 1 Saturday night and he said no as I do the weekends. I feel like he gets every weekend to himself, should he really have 13 days in the week too?

Am I being taken advantage of here?

The way I would absolutely think about in a marriage is that it would be reasonable for him and you to be ending up with relatively similar amounts of money net of family and living cost expenses - that's clearly not happening here (if he is leaving for the weekend but not renting a flat where is he going?). I would also suggest that the two of you should end up with relatively equal amounts of free time - that is also very very clearly not happening here given that a lot of the time the kids will be at school during the week (maybe not your youngest?) and he has all the weekends off.

A separation/divorce changes things a bit as it becomes about what the legal minimum he is likely to be able to contribute in time and money to your shared set-up. You 100% absolutely need to go and have a few conversations with a divorce lawyer - you don't need to tell him but you need their advice of what this looks like if you do things formally. If your youngest doesn't start school to September I might be tempted to slow play things till then in case he decides to completely disappear assuming you don't have good alternative child-care options.

So he does no ironing, cleaning or washing and kids are at school?! Not a Sahd and not seperated in anyway. Divorce and get your share of his pension he likely squirreling away

Lawyer up and let them deal with it is the only advice I would give here.

am trying to keep things amicable....

That ship has sailed. You need to get legal advice and make a formal arrangement where you don't live together. This half measure isn't working for you and you can be sure it's confusing the hell out of the kids.

I suspect he knows what he's doing and is trying to set a precedent of you paying for everything to improve his dividend in the divorce. You are being played.

You need to divorce and start your new lives separately.

This sounds like a miserable way to live long term. Living together like that won’t be good for your DC anyway. Far better to sell up and both buy new places. Your ex can’t expect to live there for free, just because he is doing childcare.

But he is still living in the house for 4/5 days every week?

You need to tell him he needs to start contributing towards bills etc. you also need to move a 50/50 arrangement in the interim. So every other weekend and half the week. Even if that means you need to pay a childminder

Sell up. You're adding equity that he's going to get eventually and this set up sounds awful for you.

Thank you for replying. I would like to buy him out of the house but unfortunately I can’t afford to do that so other than co-living we would have to sell our house and buy 2 smaller places.

Your own smaller place that you have control over and you can afford more comfortably sounds like a better option. You're subsidising him to the tune of £800 while being skint yourself, and never able to have weekends.

He's obviously decided to exploit the situation to his own benefit.

If he was acting in good faith, co-living could work, but he's mugging you off.

Why does he still live with you? And how can he be a 'stay at home dad' on weekdays only when all his children are school age? That's not even really a thing. I dont understand why you didn't just have a clean break and keep your distance from him.

At some point you are going to have to face the reality that you’re no longer a couple and stop trying to run things like you are. You think you’re doing the best for the kids - you aren’t. Time to have the argument and start to get on with your life.

Aside from anything else - stop going along with him! He’s massively taking the piss. Did you really think things could stay the same once you split up?

On the days off - in once sense I don’t think he’s unreasonable, he should be able to take time off to go away too, but this in particular highlights the problem imo. I would look at redressing the balance mid week as well as weekends, and live separately too. There is no “we” in affording things, you need to separate out your lives.