What's the obsession with maintenance?

[geckofrog]

This is the step parent board so I know it exists in most step parents life but almost every thread on here what ever it is is always answered with does he pay maintenance? Cms calculation is minimum.

Why do so many posters assume the partner of the stepparent ISN'T paying enough?

Maintenance is nothing to do with the step-mother as PPs have pointed out.

Interesting, given there are posts from SMs on this board very regularly complaining about the maintenance their husband pays to support his children and that it is "unfair".

It’s a very pointed question and usually totally irrelevant to the OP’s problem.

It's often far from irrelevant because it is the cause of issues in the co-parenting relationship between the SDC's parents and it soeaks volumes about the characters of all of those involved, including the SM if she is happy to shack up with a man who doesn't pay 50% of the cost of housing and raising his own children.

Huh?

What do you think lone parents do (who don't even have a break because no ex-husband is having contact)? We work damn hard to provide for the children alone and pay for childcare. It's not easy, but it's not "impossible". What a ridiculous comment.

Are you including the bit where he pays to house them in his own house there? People shouting about maintenance on stepparenting threads seem to totally disregard that.

Child maintenance isn’t supposed to cover 50% of the costs of raising the child for the resident parent. Why should it? It’s supposed to balance out the difference is costs - so if it’s a 60-40 split, it is to help with the additional 20% the resident parent has to cover. So it (poorly, because the calculation isn’t about costs) represents 10% of the costs of housing and raising the child.

Otherwise you want the father to cover the costs of housing and raising the child for 40% of time he has contact, and then cover 50% of (100% of) the resident parents’ costs too.

In any case it is irrelevant because it is not the SM’s responsibility to pay maintenance to the SC’s mother. Nor is it her failing if the father doesn’t pay the required rate. She simply doesn’t need to be checking the CMS calculator etc. Most people simply trust that their partner is sorting his own shit out. Or do you think women are morally responsible for
ensuring their partner pays his bills generally?

You also seem to be implying that it’s totally fine for a resident parent to make contact difficult (in various ways) because they’re not happy with how much money they get. It’s not. The courts view contact and maintenance separately.

It depends - the ‘fairness’ issue is in whether he is contributing to their household too. Or if, as some men do, they use their maintenance as an excuse to not step up to their financial responsibilities at home. How many times do we see an OP where she’s covering 100% of their shared child’s costs (and paying more of the mortgage and other bills), while he contributes nothing to raising his own children (often financially and more or less nothing practically).

Even more so if he’s choosing to pay his ex more money, and just reducing their contribution further and expecting the poster to just cover the costs of that choice.

The problem, as it so often is, is a partner one. For some reason lots of people on MN don’t seem to care much about men’s financial responsibilities to their second family. They only care about maintenance. And want it to cover at least 50% of the ex’s costs.

I think you have just highlighted the exact point I was making earlier. Women are not and should not be treated as equally culpable for men who don't pay 50% of all costs for their children (which btw is a fairly impossible feet)

Although if mum and dad were married and they owned a house, many mums have kept the house as part of the divorce and as resident parent which as it should be.

I have seen many times on here that sm asking for advice where dad is not contributing financially his current living arrangements, and or any child they have jointly and children from blended families don't live on air.

But they they aren't complain about cms for the step kids, they rightly annoyed about the disparity but mainly they are annoyed at their DH (or should be as he's causing the problem)

As much as mums are allowed to complain about cms dodging exs so should sp who find themselves in the above position without getting a good kicking. Because it's a man at the centre of it and the fecking cause.

Im owed just short of £10k by the kids dad. He is a high earner and just does not want to pay. He hates us.

Mine does the same. Pays over £500 a month into pension, deducted at source.
He isnt allowed to see them now but during lenghthy child contact court arrangements he would say the same.. im not having them unless its overnight. Then constantly report to CMS that he was a 50/50 parent. Its been awful. Dragged through court dragged into poverty and it continues. No one cares.

He's an a-hole who simply doesn't understand how often it is explained to him that by not paying maintenance he is causing a severe detriment to his own children. His own children who share his genes.

Though I agree he likely hates you but you don't share genes with him.

Anyway this isn't the part of the forum for this argument as it isn't a step-parenting issue.

My ex pays the minimum and on top of that deducts the train fare of DS travelling to meet with him (he refuses to travel to meet with DS) and a further £20 for lunch expenses. Imagine if my child maintenance was £20 per meal!

As I said before:
Anyway this isn't the part of the forum for this argument as it isn't a step-parenting issue.

Why do so many posters assume the partner of the stepparent ISN'T paying enough?

Because generally fathers don’t pay enough or take enough responsibility. Often, wanting to opt out of parenting is why they leave a marriage.

It’s pretty uncontroversial: the ONS will show, year after year, that the majority of children in poverty are in families headed up by a female single parent. That’s an awful lot of deadbeat fathers.

Child maintenance is between mother and father and often predates new/step parents. So despite your attempt to police I think it is relevant.

This is what ops talking about.

Maintenance between mum and dad doesn't involve a sp.

Dad not paying for any of children (either one from the first marriage or second) is conversation between the mother of those children and dad.

Huh?

PPs have pointed out why it isn't the step-parents/new partners business.

Or to put it another way - Why is up to women to police a man's financial behaviour?

I agree with your first point. It's absolutely not relevant to the stepparent. They aren't involved.

Thank you. They are not involved.

On the other hand it can yield valuable information.

It is clear that people just love holding women responsible for men’s failings. Depressing.

Pays over £500 a month into pension, deducted at source.

STBXH is paying £750 extra into his pension every month. I know because I’ve of financial disclosure. All the while pleading poverty, claiming he’s the financially weaker party (on a six figure salary) because he has to pay maintenance for 3 children (2 from his first marriage; 1 is our DS), and whinging about everything. He does pay (to the literal penny and nothing more) what the CMS calculator says, and recalculates it monthly to check he’s not over paying.

He’s a shit. The only person to blame for this is STBXH.

Because this is Mumsnet....it's the single most sexist place on the planet 😆

Compared to everything, everywhere in the rest of the world run by men? Alright then.

"So over a third of non resident parents aren't paying"

This statement is not actually true - as usual whenever you see a headline-grabbing statistic you need to delve a little deeper into the source. Although the "Today's Family Lawyer" article linked to up-thread is technically quoting official statistics, they conveniently leave out that the Gov.uk percentages they refer to specifically relate to "Paying Parents using Collect and Pay."

We all know the CMS collect and pay service is mainly used in cases where the NRP is being a deadbeat shit and it's the only way for the RP to even have a hope of receiving any kind child maintenance - no decent NRP is voluntarily going to pay an additional 20% fee if they're a responsible parent who has no objections to contributing fairly towards their children. It's therefore a self-selecting sample and can't be extrapolated to NRPs as a whole.

From Gov.uk:

"At the end of June 2023:

• 590,000 children were covered by 410,000 Direct Pay arrangements
• 320,000 children were covered by 250,000 Collect and Pay arrangements:
• 180,000 of these children were covered by 130,000 Collect and Pay arrangements where the Paying Parent paid some maintenance during the quarter
• 140,000 of these children were covered by 120,000 Collect and Pay arrangements where no maintenance was paid during the quarter
• 19,000 children not yet assigned to a service"

i.e. out of 910,000 children, the RPs of 140,000 of those children received no maintenance i.e. around 15% of the total - however the actual % figure will be lower than that since the many RPs have more than one child therefore the 140k is representative of 140k children, not 140k NRPs (I'm discounting the 19k not assigned as we don't know what their payment methods will be but it won't make a material difference to the overall percentages).

I readily acknowledge that the number of RPs receiving little or nothing from the NRP is a national disgrace; however it is totally misleading to bandy about figures such as "a third of non resident parents aren't paying" when the official figures show that a clear majority of NRPs pay without needing CMS intervention. Whether those private arrangements are sufficient should be debated elsewhere - it's not fair when thread after thread is derailed demanding to know the NRP's maintenance contributions regardless of the situation being posted about.

Many step parents on this board are quick to call out when an OP has a DH problem - funnily enough we rarely need to ascertain what level of maintenance is being paid to understand the wider context or help us make that judgement, because we live(d) within that dynamic. I feel questions such as "does he pay maintenance" and "were you the OW" are usually as much use as neatly planted clues at the scene of a crime - someone with experience can spot they're a bit too obvious and can probably be dismissed as the red herrings they usually are. Another indication of those questions' intent is the fact that those who ask them very rarely come back with any actual advice once it's been established that the NRP is, in fact, contributing fairly. The don't give a shit about the answer unless it can provide ammo to stick the boot in.

Govt link:

It’s not relevant to every post. Posters seem totally obsessed with it, desperate to insert a discussion surrounding it into any topic relating to step parenting.

Even if the NRP is paying, irrespective of what they pay, posters aren’t satisfied anyway.

Around 50%

Whilst a direct link between SP earning and maintenance is absolutely not right, it is sometimes relevant if a non or lower paying NRP is doing so because he is living off the SP wage or providing full time care for a step or new child, thus reducing maintenance. In those cases, a morally right position would be for the NRP household to.include maintenance in their combined monthly budget.