The most ridiculous/hilarious/ludicrous thing you've read here?

[AbigTurtlesTail]

I'll go first...

An OP being told she shouldn't have a phone background picture of only her children because it may make her stepchildren feel excluded

This is me now and I am really struggling - I desperately want to go away just us and our kids and I just know it will never happen so my resentful will build even more! Grrrrr

the statement ‘in my experience in 95% of case it is the step parents fault” followed by loads of agreement. That kicked me when I was down!

Go away with your kids. Even if he won’t come. Just go yourself.

I know it’s not quite the same. But the alternative of you and them just missing out is worse.

Oh yes the step grandparents stuff.

Reminds me of another where the OP didn't invite SC for a day out with her parents and nephew (who the SC didn't know) and she was apparently depriving them of a day out with their STEP COUSIN 😂 their step cousin who they'd never even met. Absolutely ridiculous.

There's always loads of that sort of shit on the grandparents threads. Doesn't matter if the step mums parents have only met the 15yo kids once, those are their step grandchildren apparently and to even consider loving their own grandchildren more who they see multiple times a week since birth is absolutely heinous.

The MN horror and judgement when a SM’s family don’t know the SC is always a bit perplexing.

You’ve got kids who see their dad every second weekend. During that time their dad wants to do things with them. It’s also the only time they’re going to see his family. They may also have clubs and friends and other things to fit in there.

So the SM’s family is de-prioritised. She sees them when the SC aren’t there. Her in-laws take precedence when they are. Indeed, the in-laws likely prefer this and make plans to ensure the catch contact weekends.

this is the opposite of excluding the SC. It’s actually centring things around them - and their family. But people on MN are determined to view the SM and her entire family as dreadful people who keep the SC locked in a dungeon.

Agreed! Your children are only children.once. You only get so many summers per childhood.

Exactly. Absolutely no way I'll be wasting my child's very short childhood fretting constantly over fairness in every little scenario.

Some of the step grandparents/extended family stuff is mad. I'm not a step parent but my sister is - she came into her DSS's life when he was mid teens and has a perfectly good (if not in any way 'motherly') relationship with him. He mainly lives with his mum in a different city and just visits, though he does have a bedroom at their house. In the five years DSIS and her fiancé have been together my parents and I have met him maybe a handful of times, generally just in passing. But according to some posts I've read on here (generally just when they pop up on Active) my parents should treat him exactly the same as their actual grandkids, spend the same on presents, be 'granny and grandad', take him on days out and holidays etc, and I should be acting as his auntie. I vaguely remember a thread about personalised baubles as being particularly ridiculous!

I can only imagine how weirded out I'd be as a 15 year old if some random old couple started insisting on calling me their grandchild and putting up pictures of me in their house etc, or some woman I've met once drags me off to the seaside with her primary aged DNs! The kid has four grandparents and other relatives already that he's close to, I'm sure he has no need or desire for more 😅

A thread where the stepmum was really ill with norovirus and was also diabetic sticks in my mind. She’d asked her husband to delay step child’s birthday day out as she wasn’t in any fit state to look after their joint tiny children.
Some of the posts were mind boggling - basically she should have risked her health and also being unconscious looking after a small child just so step child didn’t get disappointed

But NO ONE is more important than the step child. They are the children of gods and angels, who on earth would let other humans get in the way of their perfect birthday. 🙄

One of the genuinely ricidulous assertions that is repeated time and again in different ways is that, if a stepmum (with or without her DH/DP) arranges a day out, a holiday, any sort of treat that the SCs are not included in... it is proof that the SCs are not regarded as part of that family unit, and the exclusion will leave them traumatised outsiders forever.

I remember that one, too!
The sheer ignorance of how serious a run of the mill tummy bug can be for a diabetic, the contempt for the SMs health, lack of regard for the safety of tiny children... 🤯🤯🤯
And these people are generally the loudest at telling everyone how good and moral they are! Truly a "they walk among us" moment.

The post about the step mum whose dhs ex expected to pay towards the child support (I admit I contributed to that thread as similar situ) because she was promoted and earning well. Even though the child was reaping the benefits when at their house 3 out of 4 days.

This one is going to be controversial - the assumption that maintenance is always the “bare minimum” and not enough to cover 50% of the child’s expenses that’s not always the case. With all the mumsnetter’s with husbands on £150k plus jobs - surely when they are ex husbands they would be getting decent maintenance?

I’m not talking about Ex’s that avoid paying or pay £7 a week before you come for me

Fully agree. DH has paid a lot more than "fuck all" over the years. I advised he has paid a lot more in maintenance than he's spent on our joint child, and got ripped apart because he shouldn't have had two children and doesn't earn enough. (His wage is above the national average, and because of £££ maintenance and endless fucking demands I end up finding our child and subsiding him really)

Completely missed the bloody point.

And then when I said his ex paid him £29 a week when she was the NRP, it was weirdly absolutely fine and not "fuck all" and nobody said she shouldn't have had kids she couldn't afford. Strange.

Sounds familiar. DH’s ex paid nothing for SD while she was the NRP AND claimed the child benefit, this was despite earning 60% more than him. This was during the expensive childcare years.
As soon as she took SD back she put in a claim then went mad because it wasn’t enough and then tried to report him for tax evasion (he wasn’t).

maintenance is also not meant to cover 50% of the child’s costs.

If you think about it can only be meant to cover 50% of the costs for the additional time the RP provides for the child compared to the NRP.

Both parents need to house the child in their homes. Both of them need to pay for the child during contact time. It’s just that the RP has more contact.

say the NRP does EOW Fri to Monday morning and every Wednesday. That’s 5/14 nights. The RP has the child 9/14 nights. So there are an additional 4 nights every fortnight that the RP has the child.

The maintenance is less 50% of the child’s costs than 50% of those additional 4 days. In theory.

But the actual maintenance calculation has nothing to do with costs. It’s done entirely on income. That means that a NRP might be paying £28 or £700 a month (or any other figure) in maintenance.

The blanket statement that minimum CMS is never enough is ridiculous. Often it’s no where near enough. And whatever the NRP can afford would never be enough because their earnings are so low. But sometimes it is far more than the costs the RP in incurring. In that case, it seems ridiculous to insist that the NRP should give the RP more money. Especially if the ex is not working.

Shitty isn't it. Dhs ex told the child benefit and CMS people DSS lived with her and we were lying. That was fun. She also declared she had another child living with her, even though they were an adult.

I know there are shit dads out there but DH isn't one of them and I get sick of defending his decision to not have his entire wage paid directly to his ex, and the fact we have a child.

Also, the strange idea some people seems to have that the kids don't have money spent on them in their father's home.
I can assure you all that DSD costs us hundreds of pounds per month in addition to the maintenance sent to her mother. Her bedroom and associated bills, food , toiletries, clothes, activities, gifts, trips out etc etc all cost money.
I'm not sure why some posters like to insist that kids cost their mothers a fortune and CMS is never enough but in the next breath the costs the father incurs in his home are surely marginal and give it "how could you begrudge your DSC the cost of a few extra chips in the air fryer?" 🙄

There was a post last year (I think it was on the AIBU forum) from a struggling SM who wanted some boundaries in place in her marital home with her DP, as her DP's ex had a key to their home and kept coming round uninvited without them knowing, helping herself to cups of tea and seeing her kids bedrooms because 'it was her right as their mother' to see where they slept.

The poor SM got completely slated on there, because apparently by enforcing some boundaries (e.g ex didn't have a key to their joint home) she was effectively then ruining the relationship with DP & his ex. Absolute madness I couldn't believe what I was reading...

Yeah the maintenance one gets me too - CMS is such a blunt tool that payments can be anything from fuck all for a self-employed payment evader who doesn't have the DC at all, to more than enough when access is e.g 4 nights with RP vs 3 nights with NRP. Yet all NRPs on here are lumped together and berated for not paying enough regardless.

What I also don't understand is all the posts you get saying NRPs only want 50/50 access to avoid paying maintenance. However if it's true that CMS hardly ever touches the sides of the true costs of raising a child then how would it ever make economic sense for a penny-pinching NRP to choose the all expenses associated with housing a child 50/50 vs paying "bare minimum" CMS? For all but a few very high earning outliers it's a contradictory argument.

Cue the inevitable "Ah but I bet it's not really 50/50" (conveniently ignoring that even with a true 50/50 it's nearly always mum who will claim the child benefit etc). Dare to point out that your DP provides everything at their own house and goes halves on all the extras then they still have a go - "and so he should, what does he want a medal?!"

Exactly. Because kids apparently don't need a bedroom, furniture, clothes, food in the NRPs home.

All of those things are free when you're an NRP!

Exactly! The double standards are ridiculous.

I always find Mumsnet values £££ over the NRPs time. Because an NRP only wants time to avoid paying, right?

But then an RP not wanting to give more time to the NRP doesn't receive cries of "she only wants them more for the money"

Dhs ex did whatever she thought would get her the most money honestly. It was her own concern throughout. So i get that some people do that, but again, it's not everyone.

And yet DARE to have a house not big enough for DSC to each have their own bedroom sitting empty for most of the time whilst your own DC share...you're evil incarnate.

Talking of money, another favourite was the one where the husband had paid for the ex to go on holiday with their children years and years ago when they first separated because she couldn't afford it back then.

Obviously he was then obligated 10 years down the line to continue contributing toward her holidays forever despite the fact he took them himself every year and she had a well paid job by then and it had been a decade 🤣🤣

Ex is NEVER wrong on here. Providing said ex is a woman.