Anyone been in this boat?
DH's maintenance increased and his ex demanded backpay...fairness enough, its all privately agreed so she gets £300 a month now for the next two years and it drops down to £240 a month after the backpay is sorted.
So new school term is starting...DH's Mum has always bought DSD's school shoes from clarks and every time about a month into term DSD stops wearing them and wears shoezone trainers that her mum buys her.
So with this year, DH's Mum got pissed at the ex (and she's lovely and fair normally), by the way she handled the whole upping the maintenance. The whole demanding it and a massive argument where we didn't have a DSD weekend over summer holidays because for some reason that was our fault?! She had planned a beach holiday the Wednesday before our weekend and told us last minute that she had extended it into the following week and somehow it's our fault that the weekend didn't happen (we agreed we would drive half way to pick her up and drop her back) but Dsd decided to stay at the beach (well dur, an 8 year old is going to choose that over coming home for a weekend)....ANYWAY....I digress..
So this year we agreed between ourselves that we wouldn't offer to buy school shoes. We would see whether the ex would buy it and DSD would wear it...of course she'll wear whatever her mum buys type of thing but there's been no sign of her buying DSD any school shoes and she'll go back to school in her winter boots that we bought her. 🙄 Considering there's going to be a heatwave coming up - apparently - it's not ideal. Yes, we understand maintenance is to help with the household in general but she's not willing to buy brand new shoes that DSD needs and expects handouts still.
The thing is, DH's Mum has two other grandkids and she's only ever bought their first school shoes for their first ever day at school and never bought them since. She gave her daughter (SIL) a bunch of cash to make up for the years that she bought DSD's her shoes.
Before anyone says "oh just buy them for her" - we've got two pairs of new casual shoes / trainers for her here which we've bought and she's worn them once when we told her to with the explanation that she needs to show appreciation for gifts like that and explained about school shoes and how grandma won't buy them again if she didn't wear them (plus it's a kick in the teeth to DH's Mum really...one year she bought two new pairs of clarks school shoes for her which cost £80). Also there were some sandles which we bought her which she never wore and grew out of which I just gave to my friend's daughter who loved them.
She also believes that all the clothes she wears is bought by Mum when in fact we bought half her clothes (for our household but ends up at mum's).
More of a rant here but how would you handle this? We're going to see whether the ex buys any shoes and if DSD turns up to ours in trainers then we have a good excuse to bring it up with the ex.