Sorry for the long post, this has been playing on my mind.
Shorter version:
I'm a woman with a great job and no children of my own. However my wife of 3 years has 3 children from a prior relationship. She is the NRP, the kids stay over only a couple of times a month. She is on minimum wage and has no qualifications - not even high school. We're both in our 50s, and I can't imagine her retaining due to struggling at school.
My dilemma: I earn about 6x my wife's salary. I'm not sure how responsible I should be/feel for making sure the two households (her ex's household, and our household) are "equal". This feels like a big ask in practice, as my wife's ex is also in a low paid job. For the households to be truely "equal" i would probably need to give 40-50% of MY salary.
My wife pays about 50% over the CMS amount, although this still isn't a lot in ££ terms due to her being on minimum wage. Should I be "topping up" her ex's household budget?
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More details:
On the one hand, I feel like her ex and the children would value the additional support. However, I also feel like: (1) this isn't my responsibility; (2) I'm already "helping out" in that the children have more than if DW was living on her own, for example; (3) the argument of making the households equal wouldn't apply the other way round - for example, if my wife's ex had a very high-paid job or a new partner with a highly paid job, and my wife was single in her low-paid job, she wouldn't be receiving money to make the "households equal".
I should add there has been a lot of animosity between my wife and her ex over contact etc, which makes me not want to give her any more money. So while the simple thing would be to just pay her more, I don't really want to. Although I do feel guilty when I think of the children- I should add they're clothed, housed, well fed, go on an international holiday with the RP every couple of years, do extracurricular activities etc. My wife's ex has a social life and goes out with friends. But she struggles with things like driving an old car, renting rather than owning her property, working full-time not part time. I think the older child also worries about money, for example he says things like: "we're not going on holiday with mum this year because she can't afford it; I didn't want to ask mum for [something] because she can't afford it; we wanted to watch [film] at the cinema, but mum can't afford it".
She has also directly asked for money for things like coats and shoes for the children (which we then buy) because she says she can't afford them. Things like this make me worry and feel guilty.
I have read lot on Mumsnet about the struggles of single RP's, which have changed my perspective (e.g. about maintenance being designed to ensure households are equal) and I think this is where the guilt is coming from. Previously my thinking was framed by animosity + "her budget, her problem", + "the children are already better off financially than they would be otherwise (e.g. if my wife and her ex were still together.)"