Help, I just took a beating in 'Am I being unreasonable'

[Bebo1980]

I posted the following in 'am i being unreasonable' and after a LOT of abuse a kind person suggested I come here for more balanced advice! please be gentle I'm still recovering!

My dh has a daughter with an ex, they currently have an amicable relationship although it hasn't always been so. We have his daughter frequently, take her on family holidays, she has her own bedroom/clothes at our house etc etc. My dh used to give his ex money informally until several years ago she involved CSA and actually ended up receiving less money than she was originally. Since then my dh has been very conscientious in sending pay checks in voluntarily and making sure he is making the correct payments. What I am trying to say is that he wants to support his daughter and is in no way a 'deadbeat dad'.
When he dropped his daughter off yesterday his ex mentioned that she had started taking her to ballet classes and 'is he going to contribute to half?'. The money is not a massive amount (although I've recently gone back to work full time after having a baby and we are in no way loaded!). The problem is the principle. Is CSA meant to just cover basic living amounts or does it include extras?is she going to continue to ask for more contributions? In my view she took him to csa to ensure she received an adequate amount of money a month and now she wants more.Don't get me wrong I believe that she is entitled to the money she receives but how far should this go and is it worth rocking the boat by saying no?

Desk=deal

Sorry I waffled on a bit there!

There seems to be a theme emerging here - that the ex only considers the father to be a parent when she wants his money .........

We have a similar situation whereby dh pays maintenance and then his exW arranges things for their dc's and then asks him to pay half. They have an agreement that she asks him first before arranging anything but in practice she doesn't do this.

I completely agree with those who have said it's not right to spend someone elses money without asking them first. There is an assumption, often wrong, that the other parent can just afford it but even if they can they surely have a right to be consulted first?

We have my dsd's for exactly half the time. DH pays maintenance over what he would have to under the CSA's rules. He also pays half their school trips, uniforms etc inspite of the fact that his ex gets all the child benefit/tax credits. he also pays half of ballet lessons which is not cheap for both girls.

My issue is that ballet is an extra - not an essential. If you particularly want your dc's to do it and you can afford it then fine. If you can only afford it by getting your ex to pay half then have the decency to ask before booking it up. It's not a bad lesson for kids to learn that they can't have everything.

At the moment my DH is not earning much at all which means I am paying for all the extras. I find this really hard as I'm paying for something for my DSD's that I couldn't, at the time, afford to give my own (now grown-up) children.

couldnt agree more Petal and catsmother.

we took the line ages ago to not contribute over and above what the court agreement specified. Not only because it was a sizeable sum based on DH's earnings a few years earlier (when they were substantially higher than they are now) but also because DH was never involved in decisions and things would change anyway, so who could tell where the money would end up? Decision 1 - DS1 is learning clarinet so she said I have spent £600 on a clarinet and you need to pay half. Um, no. in fact DS1 had lessons for 5 weeks and then got bored and clarinet was sold on ebay. I have no doubt that if DH had paid half he would never have seen any of the money back upon sale!

Decision 2 - boys are being sent to a school several miles away. EXW made the choice. Then demands DH half the bus fares. He refused. She complained but then came to an arrangement with another parent to take the kids to school. So DH would have paid up front.
Just two small examples. We were paying anyway for things such as holidays (EXW never took them anywhere, not even once), activities, clothes (she wouldnt send any clothes over for them at weekends), shoes and clothes when we realised they were too small/tight.
I think it opens the floodgates if you start paying up whenever asked, when you were never involved in the decision.
The most recent we had was : DS1 needs a computer. Why dont you make me out a cheque for £500 and I will sort it out.
ha!

Catsmother - what an excellent post, it summarises perfectly how I feel about the situation. Although I risk taking the discussion further off on a tangent, I'd like to add our own experience to the discussion?

As with many others, DP is paying for clothing, activities etc for DSS in addition to the CSA payments he makes because exW refuses/is unable to provide necessary items for him (such as school shoes that fit). However, the family court system is totally unco-ordinated with the CSA which has financially disadvantaged us even further.

Two years ago, DP applied to court because exW was refusing contact. The outcome was that DSS was subject to a contact order, but DSD(then 12) was not subject to a Court Order setting out contact with DP; instead, the court issued a Recital, which stated that subject to her specific wishes, DP and his exW should faciliate DSD visits, in line with DSS contact visits.

DSD has chosen not to visit for the last 12 months, so exW went to the CSA and asked for the payments to be increased; they had been taking into account the number of nights a year that DSD was staying here, so DP now pays more every month.

But, we still have to have a room available for DSD, and a vehicle big enough to transport three children, just in case DSD does decide to grace us with her presence visit one weekend.

So even under the CSA system of payment adjustments for overnight stays, DP is being stung twice.

I agree with Catsmother - the NRP does have similar costs to RP (a room, car, clothes and often activities) which never appear to be taken into account by RPs.Our DSS is part of our family and we include him in all aspects of our life. His mother does have additional day to day costs such as school meals, weekly activities and I believe CSA plus CB funds these expenses. I would not pay for additional activities as if both parents can't afford the activity then maybe it doesn't happen.

In our case the RP is now also a step parent and finally realises that step children are just as expensive. Karma, just got to love it!

Smum - I am sure that a large proportion of RP would prefer that their DCs were not considered part of the NRP family, though - DPs exW has told him this outright; saying it wasn't DPs 'place' to consider DSS as a member of his 'new' family

I think the way she asked is wrong. She should have discussed it with you first. However, I'd pay if you can afford it, or if there's another activity she'd like to do, you could arrange fir her to do that when she's with you.

In our case, what happens in her time, she pays for, what happens in our time, we pay for. In fairness, she even rearranges/asks us if we can take SD to parties before agreeing to them. She doesn't include DH in any part of SDs life at all however. We pay through the CSA simply because she refused to name DH on the birth cert, and there were queries over parentage. So, we paid for the CSA DNA test, before any monies would be handed over. We have recently (after two years) stopped paying a monthly contribution to our solicitors cigar fund, in order to gain any form of contact with SD, this was contested by the ex, thus pushing our costs ever further, whilst she hasn't actually paid a penny towards court or solicitors fees (we know this because she a) admitted it and b) things that she did and didn't do that would have been different if she'd had legal advice)

Personally, and this is completely without malice, I would say that quite simply, where a joint decision has been made, both should contribute. Where only one has made the decision, they should not expect a contribution from the other.

Notadisneymum - oh yes the ex isn't happy if dss is included in our family but she will also complain if she feels he is excluded.

I think the CSA should cover all expenses. I wish My DH gave me the same amount his ExW gets to spend on his DD. Oh and I would also love to have my rent paid, child care help, council tax reduced and other such benefits I am not entitled to like school meals and even free holidays!!! Sorry but it really irritates me when people think that single mothers are so badly off and that CSA doesn't cover everything and therefore they should pay extra on top of that. My DH ExW has more expendable income a month than me and I mean by at least £200+ more. So no I don't think he should pay for ballet lessons CSA covers it.

Can I give you another perspective. I think the majority of RP's do not get anything over the CSA payments. I dont know any LP that does.

I dont and my child support took an enormous cut when my ex remarried to support his new wife's 3 children (who were also being supported by her ex too). They had an income more than twice mine, but thats how the rules operate and I just had to suck it up and make savings. I buy all clothes, pay for all childcare as I work full time, and pay for all school trips, uniform, pocket money (even when they are at his!) etc. I wouldnt dream of asking him for anything. Fortunately I earn enough not to have to rely on him.

Yes he did buy a big house with a bedroom for them, but they are HIS children too. I can understand that if you are a step parent you might not feel the same, but I really dont think accomodating your own children, or paying for them when they are with you should be seen as a big deal.

elastamum - its great that you provide what your DCs need -but when a RP is receiving CS but the DCs are still visiting the NRP in shoes/clothes that are too small, and the DCs are being told by the RP that they can't do certain activities/clubs any more because the RP can't afford it, and yet that same RP is spending on takeout food, gym membership and riding lessons for themselves - it is likely that the NRP (and DP) will step in and plug the gap.

I have bought my DSS school shoes that fitted because his mum refused to get his feet measured and my SO could not stretch his monthly income to cover it at short notice.

Like you, I took financial responsibility for my DD when I was receiving CS and it was only when my exH began to resent it that I changed the arrangement.
But, I know several of my 'friends' as well as DP exW, who take advantage of their exH commitment to their children to improve their quality of life at the DCs expense

As an RP who gets "informal" but regular (ie monthly standing order) maintenance from the NRP if I want the DC to do activities then that is up to me with the money I have - I wouldn't ask him to contribute half. I did moan that September was being an expensive month due to lots of things needing to be paid for at once and one of the DCs having a birthday but not in any way suggesting he should give me more money.

I do wonder what will happen if he and the OW do ever actually manage to live together (currently a few hundred miles away from each other) as she has two DC and so his money would need to support them as well I suppose if they were together. But until that happens I will try not to worry about it.

I'm not sure what I get compared with what the CSA would calculate as H and I had debt together which is being paid off through an IVA and it is hard to tell whether that would be taken into account when calculating maintenance (he is making the full IVA payment, which I deduct from his net salary and then calculate the percentage on that amount, as well as adjusting each month for the actual amount of time he has had the children overnight). From looking at the CSA website I think that it might suggest the IVA payment should be reduced based on the maintenance payment but tbh I would rather the IVA were kept at its current amount and I receive slightly less than the IVA fail. But that was a bit of a tangent.

Incognito - it is possible to split benefits, but not encouraged; my DD is 50:50 and while I get CB, my exH claims tax credits (his household income is less) and we have an informal arrangement where no cash is handed over (he buys uniform and pays for school trips as he earns a lot more than me).

I know that I could claim all her benefits, demand CSA from exH and still leave him to pick up the slack if i claim that i can't afford what she needs - but I choose not to.

I think this is pretty cut and dried.

I suggest, do some sums and work out how much it costs each month for exW to 'keep' DSD (include everything - percentage of mortgage/rent, bills, groceries, phone, internet, her clothes, her books, her mobile phone, holidays, school trips, dancing lessons, etc etc), then divide that in two (remember exW is responsible for half).

If the amount DH pays exW is less than that each month, he should pay half towards worthwhile extras if he can afford it. If he can't afford it and exW can't afford it, DSD can't have it, just like any child in a non-seperated family. DH should always be consulted first.

If the amount he pays is more than that, why should he pay for something he has already paid for once? The money has obviously been spent on something/someone other than DSD.

Simple as that.

Except there will always be exceptions. I, for example, would never ask exH for extra money. When things are cut and dried, they are simple and there is less potential for conflict, which is good for me and for DCs.

But DH's exW expects plenty of extra money, and gets it. Because, one: life's too short for the aggro and two: she'd still spend the money on herself and DSC would have to go without.

I'm not sure it is so cut and dried as that, fourkids.

but what if DH can 'afford' certain things, but doesn't think it is a good use of money? Shouldn't there be a different standard for neccessities and luxuries? One that takes into account that households might have a different definition of each?

And if we're talking about things whch are not, clearly, necessities - then shouldn't the NRP be consulted before a decision is made to purchase them? And 'allowed' to say "no, I am not paying for that."

For example, your list includes percentage of mortgage/rent, bills, groceries, phone, internet, her clothes, her books, her mobile phone, holidays, school trips, dancing lessons. I would (personally) concede that the first 7 are reasonable expenditures which both parents should contribute to. But the rest are all, actually, non-essential items. And the NRP might well say "look, I have another household in which we go without these items" or "i have no space in my budget for these items", or "i have a philosophical objection to spending money on that" or even "i think that's a waste of money". Which, in some cases, might be true and fair.

brdgrl, I think that's probably fair...

I think I mitigated against some of that by referring to 'worthwhile extras' but I agree that there may always be disagreements about what is 'worthwhile'.

My basic point is that, however you work it out, if exH is paying exW more than she spends on the his DCs, IMO he shouldn't pay for extras. Because he has already paid for them but the money meant for his DC(s) has obviously not been spent on his DC(s).

If he is single he can make those decisions for himself and agree to pay whatever he chooses, but if he has a DW or more DCs he may be doing them a disservice if he agrees to funnel more money to exW that is not being used for his DC(s). His responsibility is only to his DW and all his DCs - not his exW or her new DCs or her new DH if she has them. And if maintenance is not being spent on his DC(s) it is presumably being spent on one of the above.

If, however, he is NOT already covering half the cost of raising his DC(s) his exW may justifiably feel he should be contributing to other things if they can agree that they are a good use of money, and he can afford it. She may think he should pay up whether he can afford it or not, but I guess that's another story!

Obviously it isn't that cut and dried (you are right) because some exWs think their exH should also support them. I 'm sure some exHs also think they should support their exWs. Personally I disagree. An ex is just that. An ex.

Can of worms.

Prior posters are right though...a lot of this (and the above principle) comes down to how much money exH earns, therefore how much he pays. many exHs pay considerably more than it costs to keep their child. And many don't. therefore IMO some sums are necessary.

incognitofornow,

I agree...definitely take out housing benefit. If exW doesn't pay rent it isn't part of the calculation. Nor is council tax - it isn't payable for children.

For me, the others stay in...

I'd have to think harder about the roghts and wrongs of that decision. Will come back when I have done so...