Should we have to pay this much maintenance?

[Festivalgirl83]

DP and I live together in a house we bought together last year. He has a DD (8) with ex wife who he split with when DD was a year old. I have 2 DC of my own.

His DD has never stayed overnight with him because mum firstly breast fed until she was 3 so he was unable to have her overnight for those first few years, she has then built up such a strong bond she is unable to spend a night away from her Mum and is very traumatised if this is attempted. However, she otherwise loves spending time with her Dad and being here and throughout all these years Dad has paid maintence.
His DD is now spending more time at ours than ever before, in the last 7 days she has been here for 4 full days and we give her all meals but goes home about 7pm, Dad does all the driving. This happens most weeks now.
We are starting to wonder if he could suggest paying less as we have her for sometimes more meal times and hours than her Mum but obviously maintenence is worked out on overnight stays.

Does this sound completely unreasonable?

You sound spiteful.
I wonder if you would feel this way if you were the ex.
I doubt it’s costing that much for you to feed her a few meals at yours.
Awful

I think overnights is one of the big failings of how child maintenance is calculated. It would be better to calculate maintenance on days

I totally agree. People tend to get a bit obsessed with overnights on account of this. When I was small (with separated parents) it was fine to spend the day with Dad, then come home to sleep at Mum’s house (which is what I wanted to do) because no one was counting up the £££££s that go with overnight stays. And when DSS was younger, there are times when it would have made far more sense for him to come to us for tea in the week, then go home to sleep, so that he was near school the following morning, but no – the ex was having none of it, there was no way this could happen, because we had to keep up with the right amount of overnight stays, even though being at our house on a school morning meant DSS having to get up at stupid o’clock to catch the school bus. It was all about money. Not common sense. But there’s not much of the latter in step families.