What should maintenance cover?

[careerwoman]

Quick q regarding what should be reasonably covered by maintenance?

DSS is 18 and learning to drive. DH's ex just changed her car, admittedly to a smaller one so DSS could drive it, but its much newer and more expensive than her previous car, and she used money from her payments to fund it. (We know this as there was a discrepancy in DH's payments, purely accidently on his part, which meant she got a lump sum. The new car turned up 7 days after the cheque was given...) However, she has then asked DSS to pay for his own insurance - nearly £2k a year.

DH's ex gets over 1k a month (for 2 DSS only - it was a clean break settlement, so no maintenance for her). Is it unreasonable to think she should be able to fund the car insurance for DSS from this? DSS got a reasonable amount of money for his 18th birthday from us and DH's relatives, but this was not to pass onto his mother...

Clearly, this could all be a trick to ensure that DH coughs up more money to pay for this too! Clearly, we will pay, but, given she also has new partner and additional child, makes you wonder what the money is funding...

Yeah, I think you are right there.

it's weird, i hadn't realised til coming on here a bit that once a fortnight is considered not much - i must say that, selfishly, it suits me as i'd hate it if ds1 was away more than that. but even that much apparently bothers exh's partner as she feels it disrupts her weekend family time to have to accommodate him... as much as the current divorce/payments system really doesn't seem to work very well, the more you hear about individual cases, the murkier it gets in terms of trying to work out ANY universal system that could be applied to make it any fairer, it's all so dependent on so many individual factors in each couple's case.

DP and I had a useful conversation about 'maintenance' payments the other day as a few requests for extra money had come from his Ex which we were trying to work out the reasonableness of.

In basic terms the way he's reconciled the payments in his mind is that the £'s he gives her each month are improving the lives of the kids when they are with her - regardless of how much she earns or has independently of him. So - she could suddenly become a millionaire, but the £'s he gives would still make their lives that little bit easier/nicer than if she didn't receive it.

This perspective has really helped me to let go of the bits of resentment I feel when we have requests to pay 'half' of bits and bobs that have cost just a few £'s. I know that when 'they all add up' it maybe isn't just a few £'s.

I've tried the 'it isn't really any of my business' approach to decisions and discussions like this, but DP is really keen on us being a partnership and so I have to have a reasonable and objective opinion.

We're mulling over establishing a more formal agreement about what is and isn't covered by maintenance (e.g. new school coats) so that everyone's clear and the chances of getting upset are reduced/eliminated. It felt a bit business-like at first, but I'm coming around to the idea - it feels like it would be a really good foundation and reduce the potential for tension - once the tension of setting it up is gotten through of course!

ladysanders If you fall in love with someone then you're not going to not 'buy' because of the financials... I would live in a box if I had to to be with my DP. But it doesn't make it any less annoying that we support his ex while she sits around painting her nails.

Regards the children in childcare thing. My DSD'd mum likes to comment on how she could never leave her precious baby in childcare the way I leave mine... I just think - thank god I do, love, else who would support you?!

we are another 'second' family here who is supported by myself while my DP supports the 'first' family.

macadoodledoo If he pays maintenance i don't understand why he also has to pay for the halves of things?

Despite my DP paying over the odds for maintenance he is always having to pay for halves of things (anything form essentials like school coats to luxuries like trips to the cinema) I just don't understand it and it makes it really hard to budget. For example; we'll think, a week before pay day that we have £40 left. Then suddenly a call comes that DSD needs something and half the cost is £15. a big chunk out of our money which means that I'm left concerned as to whether my child can be bought something they may need.

My ex's maintenance money gets spent on my child, sometimes she wont need anything bought for her all month (other than the obvious things-food, etc) and so I'm quids in... other months she may need things that cost 3 times the money her dad has given me - so it evens out.

I think if there is no maintenance paid i.e. if custody is 50/50 then there needs to be some plan in place for paying for the things the child needs. Personally a good idea I think is for one parent to buy everything and for them to 'invoice' the other parent so that a good record can be kept.

That's a great arangement MJ. I think the key is the discussion rather than instruction.

As well as the flexibility on both sides.

I have learned I wont ever get extra from my ex so i take follow the absolute letter of the CSA guidelines. I don't mind per say but I may do as DD gets older and school trips etc come in to play. Saying that, he gives me £200 a month which is probably about half of DDs costs so i don't mind.

It's probably the fact that i don't ask or get given any extra from my ex that makes it all the more annoying when DPs ex gets so much more. It's like our family is always the side paying out which ever way you look at it.

Despite paying maintenance for SS, we also pay for lots of extras, but to be honest we don't mind. The ex rarely communicates with DH, so tends not to make requests, but we're aware that money is tight in the ex's household. She had 2 kids from her first marriage and now has 2 under-5s with her new husband (I can't imagine four children come cheap). So we don't want SS only have the bare minimum of everything, when we can afford to treat him occasionally. I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than give the ex an extra penny, but am quite happy to buy SS decent trainers!

"If you fall in love with someone then you're not going to not 'buy' because of the financials"

i think there are plenty of people who would choose not to. when i was single i would never have got involved with someone who already had children precisely because I didn't want to have to deal with step children/ex wives.

i mean, people fall in love all the time but there can be all sorts of reasons why you decide they're not a good bet, whether it be financial, or emotional or geographical... i just feel it's a bit rich to subsequently blame the ex wife rather than the husband... if your partner is happy to pay his ex to 'sit and paint her nails' that's between them isn't it?

Agree MJ .... a lot of men are so terrified of losing touch with their kids (not out of the blue, but because contact has been disrupted when ex is in a strop) that they do agree to hand over more than is sensible .... sometimes going into debt in order to do so.

My partner was especially vulnerable to ex's requests - always dressed up of course as being "for the children" - because he'd never known his own dad (disappeared off the face of the earth when he was a baby, never paid a penny - in the days when it wasn't so easy to trace people) and was distraught at the idea of his children suffering in the same way - except of course this was different because he had no intention of vanishing. Ex however took full advantage of his achilles' heel and would regularly demand "his half" of expenses despite the fact that at the time he was giving her £600 more a month than the CSA would have had him pay (at the cost of barely existing himself). So ..... apparently "his half" of a young kid's party in the local scout hut with a few crips, sandwiches and balloons was £250 for example (yeah right). And she cried she couldn't afford to take the kids on holiday unless he paid for them etc etc. In reality .... as we later discovered in court ..... ex was saving at least £300 a month and still bleating that she was "living in poverty" (direct wicked (IMO) quote). There really are some extremely unscrupulous people out there who'll emotionally blackmail, threaten and lie ("I want to cut my wrists because I've got no money" at 3am) and tantrum to bleed someone else dry.

Needless to say the ex's demands couldn't continue forever though she rode the gravy train for a good 6 years until DP grew a backbone and went to the CSA (and stopped paying "his half") after being made redundant, being out of work for more than a year and eventually accepting a £15K pay drop. Not surprisingly ex went ballistic and stepped up contact obstruction as "payback". I considered what was going on was absolutely my business ..... DP had an obligation to all his children, not just the ones he'd had with that creature, and as far as I'm concerned that woman has - through a combination of greed and spite - cost us tens of thousands of pounds over the years (over and above maintenance) which has directly affected our lives, and most importantly, that of my daughter. This isn't "just" DP foolishly handing over "extra" money but "indirect" costs like legal fees, significant travel costs (she moved), having to buy very last item of clothing the children might need because she won't send anything to ours (to the extent of sending SD in a strappy cotton dress and flip flops in mid winter) and last minute (like the afternoon before) holiday cancellations (that had been "agreed" for months). NONE of that should have been necessary - NONE of that is fair ..... damn right it's my bloody business and I will do all I can to try and persuade DP to minimise those costs as much as he possibly can because our child is the one who misses/loses out left right and centre. I do this because DP - like many other dads in his position with a completely unreasonable ex - tends to panic first and think later when confronted with ex related issues ..... fretting that contact will be stopped (again) but not immediately thinking of the impact giving in to her unfair demands will have elsewhere.

And breathe ................

?I think the ridiculous promises of a man desperate to keep contact with his children were very much my business, particularly when they were driving us into poverty?

I agree totally MJ, I think you?ve summed it up really well. Anything which affects the new wife and family IS the business of the new wife. And men who are desperate to stay in contact with their children WILL make ridiculous promises.

Thankfully my none of my husband?s promises have caused us financial problems, but in the early days, when he was in contact with both his children (aged 11 and 13 at the time) the truly insane logistics, hanging round motorway service stations for handovers (long story), nearly missing a holiday flight due to ex being awkward (another long story) changed plans, communication failures and general spitefulness of the ex had a VERY big impact on DH, and by extension, me, as I?m his wife.

DH would have done absolutely anything to see his children, he ex knew it, and played on it, big style. She made a total fool out of him, but he never once complained, because he was terrified she would withhold access. He meekly and impotently obeyed her. Which was very sad to see, as DH works in the construction industry, deals with hairy-a*sed builders all day long, and has no problems fighting his corner. Yet his dwarfed, er sorry, petite ex wife ran him ragged and he wouldn?t say ?boo? to her.

As the years have passed, it?s ironic that if we upset her, she intensifies her attempts to send SS to us at every opportunity (quite the opposite of what DH feared) ? but even now, he?s still reluctant to cross her.

I have to say that if we?d suffered financial hardship to keep the ex sitting at home painting her nails, I would most definitely have had something to say about it. But money is only one side of the coin (no pun intended) when dealing with ex?s.

bloody hell, poor you lot, i do have a few friends who are divorced but don't know anyone going through this kind of thing. again, it's a bit of an eye opener, it's obviously more common than i'd imagined.

i do think it's very hard, but essential to try to keep the financial discussions separate from the access ones... even when exh and were at really nightmare moments over money, it never would have occurred to me to refuse him access - it only punishes the child which as a mother ought to be the last thing you want.

is it not possible to go back to court and ask for financial stuff to be renegotiated? i mean, when my exh has got really narky in the past, he just refuses to pay me anything, which i must say focuses the mind fairly quickly on reaching a comprimise solution, since i discovered to my cost that enforcing a court order is much easier said than done.

Catsmother - your post is superb, I can feel your frustration jumping off the screen.

I hope it's not common ... I wouldn't wish this kind of frustration upon anyone else. Inevitably, the people going through this kind of thing are the ones who seek out advice and support because they've reached the end of their tether. I'd like to think that the majority of ex's don't take advantage, use the children as "pay per view" weapons or blatantly lie - I know I certainly didn't when I was a single mum for many years, and yes, Lady S, totally agree that disagreements with your ex should not influence contact.

In my own situation, there's nothing court can do to help our finances. The sort of thing I referred to isn't really covered by legislation. DP did try to establish a fair pattern of shared driving & meeting when he applied for a contact order but that was all but dismissed (ex has to meet him halfway every 4th contact which is an insult after we paid for ALL the driving for 7+ years). Obviously we can't do anything about the CSA either ... there's another thread ATM where someone (might have been Petal ?) commented that the "one size fits all" formula is never going to be fair to everyone and I totally agree but I don't have the magic answer to it either. All I know is that the CSA takes no (real) account of travel costs, no account of capital assets handed over in order to give ex miniscule mortgage close to work, no account of the (often) huge housing costs NRPs have when they have to start again from scratch relatively late in life etc etc. Clearly those NRPs fortunate enough to have little or no mortgage and who live close to both work and kids benefit from the CSA formula (and hopefully this'd mean that their larger disposable income would trickle down to their kids) but when the opposite is true the CSA can be crippling.

(Sorry, going off on a tangent there).

Thing is, however much I might daydream about a "perfect" CSA which was somehow intelligent enough to fairly assess everyone's individual circumstances, I know I wouldn't get so wound up about it if only DP's ex played fair in other areas. It's the constant threat we have hanging over our heads all the time of her doing everything she possibly can to make life as awkward and/or expensive for us ... e.g. by cancelling/altering arrangements at the last minute, or by winding the children up. It's then you get DP in full headless chicken panic mode which is very hard to deal with when I'm seeing the situation objectively while he's seeing it subjectively. I often get very angry with him because he tends - even now - to prefer impacting us rather than say no. As I said before, this should all be unnecessary and in DP's ex's case, I'm convinced it's not about her wanting the best for her kids (believe me, their lifestyle is very comfortable, her kids are very priviliged in so many ways) but about spite and revenge.

mj my dp was in an abusive relationship too. he just wanted out and agreed to some really daft things. now he has built his confidence up he wants to address the balance bu tit seems everyones opinion that he should keep to the original agreement no matter how unfair and if that means our family unit suffering as a consequence - so be it!

Catsmother ? another excellent post, you write very eloquently.

You?re right about the huge housing costs that the NRP may have to take on, often relatively late in life. Which often leaves the father having to support his ex in a family-sized home, and having to fund an additional family-sized home if he wants children with a new partner. Or even if he doesn?t want more children, he may still wish to live in nice house ? nothing wrong with that! Even a man who wants to do the right thing by his ex and children, can find himself financially strangled.

It was indeed me who stated that the CSA formula is not a ?one size fits all? ? in fact god knows who it does fit, because the majority of parents who use this service seem to feel slighted, no matter which side of the fence they?re on.

You also mention that your DP gets into headless chicken mode, viewing situations in an emotive way, whereas you take a more balanced view, and this can be hard to deal with. I can totally identify with this. An example of this in our household, is ?Trousergate? (which I mentioned yesterday, and very aptly named by Allnew!) when DH sped over to the ex?s house, with school trousers at 6.45am, only to have a huge bust-up with the ex on her doorstep. Of course, DH wants the very best for his son, and wouldn?t dare suggest his son asks his mother where his clean trousers are ? it?s easier (in his mind) to make a high speed mercy dash across the country roads - whereas I?m not emotionally involved, and realise that such behaviour is insane. DH just can?t see it though. It didn?t matter that it caused chaos in our household that morning, just so long as he placates The First Family.

you know i ponder over these responses and all of us that are the main breadwinners (and sometimes sole breadwinners) for the family... and I think if DP and I were to split, then I would probably end up having to pay HIM. So I will never ever ever be in the position of Lady who pleasantly agreed with her ex that she was to remain at home while her child was young and so continued in this vein even though circumstances had changed... and yet if my circumstances were to change, I would in almost all liklihood be expected to PAY my DP money as he would be'supporting' 2 children (DD and DBS) even though he has never ever ever supported DD.

Also... being the sole breadwinner in our type of set up is crap.We arent a single parent family. We arent a 2 working parent familiy with the benefits of 2 incomes. We arent a one parent SAHP and one person working with the benefit of DD having one parent about more often. Nope. we are a two person working family with one income... ie worst of both worlds.

this is really bloody annoying me this week.

and if i try and voice this, i am evil. or should have known what i was getting into. blah blah bloody blah

trousergate indeed petal!!

This year DD got a pop up penguin book from DP. DP said he looked but couldnt find anything else that he thought she would like. She loves the book and reads it almost every night.

DBS got a new digital camera and memory card, books, clothes, 2 new games for his DS, an activity set, new football boots.

DP is so typical of a DLD its comical. The difference in treatment between his two children is vast. DD is only 2 so has no idea. DBS is 6.5 and kinda gets it that he gets more things and activities but less time. He expects 150% attention when he is over and last time rang his mother demanding to go home as he didnt want to spend anymore time with me and DD. DD was having a series of tantrums which required a 2 parent approach and DBS couldnt handle that he wasnt the centre of the universe. Oh and his mother's response when DP approached her about this was 'well he only spends such a short amount of time with you every month, he should be the centre of your attention'.

Who knows how it is all going to work out in the end.

MJ It wasnt violent but she would get drunk and break his things, make degrading comments in fornt of his family and friends, take his credit acrd and run up debts which he would have to pay etc etc. She's admitted all of this to me and joked about it

It was a legal agreement that he should pay 20% of salary with no reduction for the days he has the child (half of the week) There was no agreement for him to pay for half of things that DSD needs but he does this as because his ex wont work, if he doesnt pay for things DSD goes with out.

It;s a hopeless situation.