Hi All :)
I'm looking for some Advice for my partner, please stick with me, I'm trying to paint the whole picture 😂
We live together and I have 2 Boys of my own, aged 6 and 19 Months, he has an 8 year old Boy and 7 Year Old Boy/Girl Twins. Throughout our relationship, he has had the majority care for his children and it's now a 50/50 split (we have them Weds - Sunday Morning) before we moved in together, he used to have his kids older brother, aged 12 at the time, when he had his biological children, even though he has good contact with his bio mum and dad, my partners ex wife treated him like a babysitter. As he got older, he wanted more independence and decided he wanted to stay at his mums house rather than with his former step dad but we've always said that the door is open and he's welcome here any time.
The childrens mum works, goes out, goes on holidays, gets help with her share of childcare and claims ALL the child benefit, tax credits, DLA for boy twin, etc and says my partner should be paying her. They were married and she left him for someone else, forcing him out of their shared home, kept all the kids belongings, all their combined belongings, meaning he had to start from scratch. He buys all their clothes, toys, essentials, does the school runs (2 different schools) appointments, social services meetings (they are under a CPO due to her) we moved into a 4 bed house so they would have enough room, bought all their furniture etc and have had not a single penny of support whilst their mum is getting hair extensions, personalised number plates, nights out, tattoos, new cars, days out shopping... we can barely afford to take the kids on family days out! He works full time but changed his job to work from home so he can be there for his kids so he literally has 0 social life, not even being able to talk to colleagues. She changes her job constantly and tries to change the kids Rota which we've put our foot firmly down on now after many, many changes.
At mediation (when we were trying to get her to see the damage her ever changing schedule was doing) he requested to take on one of the childrens child benefit so he would rightly be recognised as a resident parent and also have access to some financial support. He didn't want to take it all as he's a really fair person but she refused this and promised to transfer £20 total a week to my partner to help with his side of child costs. She never paid and really kicked off as soon as mediation ended, saying she does the doctors appointments (obviously she gets the letters as they 'live' there according to child benefit but she withholds appointments from their dad so he has no idea about them despite requesting duplicate letters. She rarely attends appointments though and has been in trouble for this) and she is the one that should get all the support.
Am I wrong to be annoyed? We are a hard working family and do everything and anything for our kids. We struggle for money and are the ones to deal with all the difficulties (my eldest has ASD, His boy twin has delay and ASD and his eldest has been expelled due to his anger - we had to home school him until he got accepted into a specialist school) We've not had even a child free hour between us for months as no family support. Yet his ex literally has all the free time, all the finance and luxuries. We don't want a luxury life, just to be able to provide for our children. I've told him to put a counter claim in for child benefit, but we are concerned it will put her into financial difficulty, we don't want the children to have to struggle at hers too. Does anyone have any advice? It would be really gratefully appreciated!